


How to Disappear Completely

by tarhiel



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Ashlander language conlang, Dick Jokes, Dissociation, Gen, Illusion Magic, It's a legitimate Dwemer research project not a robot kink Shut Up, M/M, Mental Illness, Skooma, Social Anxiety, The 36 Lessons of Vivec as dubious self-help manual, Tragicomedy, both kinds of shipwreck, cute guar, headcanoning morrowind npcs as lgbt, inadvertent magical guar rustling, inappropriate behaviour in libraries, midnight joyriding with middle-aged lesbians, sad elves falling in swamps, sock cucking, the actual worst striptease ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 200
Words: 344,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4925194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarhiel/pseuds/tarhiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Morrowind story about visibility.</p><p>Iriel is a young, bitterly disillusioned Altmer scholar, struggling from one disaster to the next, never quite sure which is his worst enemy in life: the inadvisable men he keeps falling for, his own traumatised brain, or the universe in general. Or perhaps people in general. Things are so much easier when he's invisible to everyone, but it isn't a permanent solution to his problems. Is it? Is anything?</p><p>Includes wild headcanoneering of various NPCs and content from the Julan Ashlander companion mod by kateri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. numb

Iriel was dragged. Off the boards, out of the gurgling belly of the ship, and into an explosion of light and strangeness. The assault on his senses forced him to withdraw from the borders of his body, sent him reeling into the depths of his mind, tripping on tangled remnants of dreams. His limbs were distant countries now, and news of foreign events came slow and sporadic in languages he didn’t understand.  
  
The guard didn't know about Iriel's inner geopolitical drama. The guard only knew that the prisoner he'd been instructed to escort to the Census Office was making his life difficult. The young Altmer kept stopping and staring blankly, or closing his eyes and making small noises in his throat. Shouting didn't even seem to register, and eventually, the guard had seized the elf by his bony wrist and hauled him bodily on to the docks.  
  
Ire let it happen. He was in no state to do anything else. Everything was very far away. He was moving. Pressure around... his arm? The pale yellow thing extending in front of him was alien and unknowable. Nothing was real. He was floating, drifting in a--  
  
"Aaahh!!"  
  
His bare toes snagged between the planks of the jetty, and he lurched forwards. His conscious mind had abandoned all responsibility, but some long-dormant reflex forced his other leg out before he fell. He gasped lungfuls of swampy air, each a rich, new tapestry of fecundity and rot. It almost made him vomit, but, coupled with the pain, served to reconnect him to his physicality a little.  
  
_Oh gods. Come on, Ire. Get it together. Walk. That’s literally all you have to do._  
  
He was wrong. Finally reaching the end of the wooden boards, his feet skidded into mud. He stared at them, blindsided by the familiarity of the sensation, cutting through the fog of doubt that he'd ever had feet before in his life. Then he detected a low, burbling sound. It seemed… expectant? He dragged his head up and tried to focus.  
  
_Fuck. Someone’s there. Someone’s talking to me. Someone's… oh gods… someone's asking me a question. I did walking, but I don't know if I can do talking, too._  
  
“…bluhrrecorrsonshoffrawhere.”  
  
Iriel gazed at the man despairingly, hoping for pity.  
  
“WHERE. DID. YOU. ARRIVE. FROM.” The dock official had a wooden clipboard and an exasperated expression. Ire took in both, with a sinking feeling of resigned dread. He closed his eyes, in a last attempt at escape. Opened them with a snap, when the Imperial rapped sharply on the clipboard.  
  
“Aaaaiiihhhh.” Ire tried to remember the order your vocal chords were supposed to go in. Wasn't there a mnemonic for it? Or was that only with singing?  
  
_Come on, you used to do this all the time. Don’t over-think it, you'll only get mixed up. Just let your brain flow out of your mouth. Metaphorically._  
  
“Whhhere did I come from?” he managed. The official nodded, wearily encouraging. Ire tried to live up to his expectations. “I… I was on a boat.”  
  
The Imperial sighed, and Ire felt a pang of failure. “From. WHERE?” the man repeated.  
  
Iriel’s eyes jittered from surface to surface. “I was in the hold! I didn’t see anything! I don’t know anything about boats! I mean, the sail's clearly square-rigged, but a brig should have at least two masts, I really have no idea what you'd call it, I didn't get a chance to examine, I... I was in the hold. I don't know anything. Why aren’t you asking the captain, or, or the–” He saw the man’s expression and trailed off.  
  
“I’m not here to register the damn boat," the Imperial said, flicking the words carefully towards him, one by one. "I’m here to register YOU. Now. Where do you come from? Where did you get ON the boat?”  
  
Ire’s brow creased. “Which one?”  
“Which what?”  
“Question.”  
“I’M asking the questions here, uh…”  
  
At this point the official hesitated. He felt slightly awkward addressing someone a head taller than he was as “boy”, but the elf before him had such an air of confused, slightly petulant vulnerability that he felt compelled to do so.  
  
“I mean,” Iriel tried again, “that the place I sailed from isn’t the place I come from. Which one do you want?”  
  
“As long as I have something to write on this form, I don’t care.”  
  
“Oh. Well… my name is Iriel of Lillandril. Which is far too many Is and Ls in one name, and really, you’d think my parents would’ve known better. We Altmer use loconymics, as I’m sure you know, so–”  
  
“That’ll do. How d'you spell Lillian… what you said?”  
  
Iriel leaned forward, trying to read the clipboard. “Are you putting it down as birthplace, or port of origin? Because the prison ship sailed from the Imperial City. Perhaps you should put that.”  
  
"You trying to tell me how to do my job?”  
  
Ire recoiled from the man’s aggressive tone. “No! Not at all! I only wanted to ensure you had all the necessary information. I’m sorry! I should probably shut up now, but it's as if my brain has two modes of operation, not able to talk at all, or not able to stop talking! I was telling myself just now, Ire, I said to myself, let your brain flow out of your mouth - which sounds quite disgusting actually, and unpleasantly similar to some ancient Yokudan embalming practices I read about once - but what I should also remember is that running my mouth straight from my brain without engaging any kind of mediating system is exactly how I ended up getting exiled from the Summerset Isles in the first place, so I should… probably…” he registered the official’s face “...will definitely shut up.”  
  
“I’m putting High Elf, open bracket, male, close bracket, hyphen, The Imperial City.” The official scribbled, resisting the temptation to add additional descriptive adjectives. He squinted at Iriel’s elegantly boned, if grubby, pale-gold Altmer face, amber eyes and soft brown hair. “You  _are_ male, aren’t you? Hard to tell with you elves.”  
  
Ire racked his addled brain for the sort of lacerating response he would have given to that, in better days, but failed miserably.  
  
Mute, he wrapped his arms around his chest, as the official commanded: “Report to Socucius Ergalla, in the Census Office.” When movement was not immediately forthcoming, the man pointed, jabbing the air with his pencil. “That way. NOW.”  
  
Ire squeaked, and shifted as best he could, stumbling towards the door and struggling with the handle until it finally obeyed him. Overcome by a sudden, powerful sense of his own wretchedness and ridiculousness, it was all he could do not to burst into tears.


	2. labels

Fortunately, Socucius Ergalla turned out to be the kindly, grandfatherly sort. Iriel, having real trouble remembering how to interact normally with people, found himself wanting to sit in his lap, barely reining himself in at the last minute. Even so, after ten minutes of conversation, it would be hard to say which of the two was more baffled and bewildered.  
  
Iriel gazed owlishly up from the floor, where he was hunched in a tangle of knees and elbows. There was a chair nearby, but after the near miss with the lap, he had panicked slightly. He preferred it down here, anyway. Real people sat in chairs, and he wasn’t quite there, yet. He blinked. “A sweet what?”  
  
“A sweetroll,” repeated Ergalla patiently. “Iced confections, you know. Sold in most Cyrodiilic bakeries?”  
  
“I’m sorry. I was a student in the Imperial City, but I didn’t spend a lot of time in bakeries. Are sweetrolls the small pink ones?”   
  
“No, no. White icing. Traditionally somewhat conical, though size varies by province.”  
  
Iriel’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Oh! I  _do_ know them! I shared one with Reu once, and it was so sticky, we spent two minutes eating it, and then another half hour licking each other clean! He got icing down his shirt - well, technically, I put it down his shirt - and… um. You probably don’t want to know about that, do you? Sorry. Um. What was the original question again?”  
  
Ergalla paused for a moment, then shook his head. “Let’s just move on, shall we?”  
  
Ire nodded guiltily. He always had trouble making polite conversation with authority figures, and right now, his verbal filters were more ragged than ever.  
  
_You just told your parole officer you lick sugar off boys for fun, Ire. And that’s the sort of thing that makes kindly old men uncomfortable, and causes them to stop being kindly to you. You have to hide the gender of the people you’re licking. Or not talk about licking at all._  
  
Ergalla reached for yet another clean sheet of paper. “Please try to relax. There’s no need to fixate upon details of the question, you need only say whatever comes into your head first. There are no right or wrong answers. This is purely a psychometric test, designed to illuminate character.” Iriel immediately looked five times as terrified as before.  
  
Even when he understood the question, he never seemed to be providing the sort of responses Ergalla wanted. For instance, the Breton kept asking about his previous occupation. Iriel had never had a job, and had made faces at all the possible lifestyle descriptors Ergalla had suggested. Further questioning didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere.  
  
During one, particularly long, awkward silence, Ergalla broke first. “Excuse me? Iriel? Should I repeat the question?”  
  
Ire was wrinkling his nose. “No, no, I heard you. I just can’t picture myself choosing any of those options. If you’d ever met my mother, you’d understand.” For the first time since arriving, he smiled. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to imagine my mother getting hit by a burning pipe for a while.”  
  
“Perhaps we should try a different avenue of approach,” murmured Ergalla, rubbing his quill against his brow.  
  
The problem, as usual, was that he didn’t fit neatly into any boxes. Which is to say, it was a problem for other people, who then made it a problem for Ire. Ergalla was trying harder than most to be flexible, which only made Ire feel even more guilty and embarrassed. “Let me see if I can create some sort of custom record here,” the old man was saying. “You tell me what you can do, and I’ll work up a skills profile.”  
  
“Is all this really necessary?” Ire asked, eyes wide. “I mean… what the fuck do they expect me to… um. I don’t see what all this is supposed to…”  
  
“You do understand what is happening, yes?” The Breton leaned forwards, hands clasped reassuringly. “You’re in Vvardenfell, in Morrowind. You’re being released.”  
  
“Yeeees.” Iriel tangled his fingers together, gaze jumping from point to point. “That’s what they told me.” He was still trying to decide if he liked it, but didn’t believe it, or if he believed it, but didn’t like it. Something horrible was bearing down on him, he knew that much.  
  
Ergalla smiled. “Exactly! And you are being released to do a very important job for the Emperor, do not forget that, my boy!”  
  
Iriel boggled. “Forget it? They never fucking told me _that!_ ”  
  
“In that case, it is not my place to say anything, but I’m sure you will be briefed by Gravius presently. My task is to ensure that we have a complete picture of your skills and proficiencies to forward to your field commander.”  
  
Iriel _definitely_ didn’t like the sound of that, to the point that he couldn’t even bring himself to ask. Instead, he said, “Skills and proficiencies?”  
  
Ergalla nodded sagely, his white beard rendering the adverb a _fait accompli_. “Correct. I still don’t understand why you reject the label of “mage” or “sorcerer”, when you were a student of magic both at the Crystal Tower in the Summerset Isles and the Arcane University in Cyrodiil.“  
  
Iriel twisted a strand of his hair. It was a nervous habit, but one he was secretly happy to regain, since they had shaved his head - under screaming, sobbing protest - on admittance to the Imperial Prison, and on a monthly basis, thereafter. His mid-brown hair was still only a handful of inches long, not to mention uneven, dirty and tangled, but every cell added to its length made him feel more like himself again. "I was studying magic,” he said, “because magic is the only thing I’m good at, and it’s all anyone cares about where I’m from. But I don’t want to be a mage. I’ve met mages, and I’m not anything like them.”  
  
“Sorcerer, then.”  
  
“Don’t you need to wear a lot of black and red silk, and live in a cave? Or is that necromancers? Not that either one is really my, um… thing.”  
  
“Healer, perhaps?”  
  
Ire looked wistful. “Restoration magic is nice. The first b… first person I ever fell in love with was a healer. They had lovely hands. Hands you felt safe in. I don’t have hands like that. I understand the theoretical principles, but I’m terrible at healing in actual practice. And I can’t talk to people the way healers do, making them relaxed and happy and so on. For example, once someone had this wart, and I told them–”  
  
“In that case,” Ergalla interrupted gently, attempting to forestall another digression, “just tell me what you _were_ good at.”  
  
Ire stared at his unsafe hands for a while. “I completed my first year of training at the Tower,” he said, “so I have some familiarity with every magical discipline. When I transferred to the Arcane University in Cyrodiil, I specialised in alchemy, alteration and enchantment, but… while I was there, I… started to wonder if magic was really what I wanted to do with my life. You see… I met these people. In the Imperial City. They were… unlike anyone I had met before. Everyone else thought they were scum, because they weren’t ‘respectable’. You know. Thieves. Whores. So-called ‘undesirables’, which, well… for one of them in particular, that was demonstrably inaccurate. I didn’t care if they broke the law, or how they got their money. I liked them better than any of the academics. They celebrated the fact they didn’t fit into normal society, and when I was with them, it felt like it was all right for me to be that way, too.”  
  
“And you acquired some practical skills from these people?” Ergalla prompted, fearing Iriel was drifting off-topic again.  
  
“Oh, no. Not really. I’ve never been very practical. Still… it wouldn’t be true to say that I learned nothing, outside the University. I realised that magic could be used in different ways. Less theoretical, and more… useful.”  
  
“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. Useful in what way?”  
  
Iriel fell silent. Ergalla waited, but Ire just stared at the table leg, chewing on a (presumably also unsafe) fingernail. “It’s difficult talking about it,” he managed, eventually.  
  
Ergalla considered Iriel’s words, in light of the things he had read in the prisoner’s record. “You are, I believe, referring to the use of magic for criminal purposes,” he said. “The very same magic, in fact, that was used to steal unfathomably valuable enchanted artifacts from the Arcane University.” Iriel slumped lower. “According to the reports, a large amount of illusion magic was employed during the heist. Iriel, I put it to you that you are uncommonly skilled in this discipline. Your refusal to reveal this to me only serves to further demonstrate that you are a master of deception.”  
  
At this, Ire’s head jerked upwards. “What part of this situation makes you think I’m a master of anything, let alone _deception_? Please don’t tell me this is what the Emperor wants me for, because he is going to be very fucking disappointed.” He pulled his knees into his chest, and rested his chin on them. “Can I go, yet?”  
  
Ergalla assumed his kindliest expression. “Iriel, I am not saying these things because you are in trouble. You have already been convicted and paid the price for your actions. Now, the Emperor has seen fit to grant you clemency, for which you should be very grateful. I am merely trying to ensure we can make the most of your skills. You have no reason to lie to me, I assure you.” Ire stared at him, marvelling at how such obviously intelligent people could draw such utterly ridiculous conclusions.  
  
  
  
Twenty minutes later, he was free. Iriel stood outside the door to the census office, still in his prison-rags, but now holding a bag. It contained a parcel of documents and a small amount of gold, issued to him by a stern Imperial officer. There had been instructions about duties, but by that stage, Ire had regressed back into the disconnected state he privately called “the numb”, and it had all washed over him meaninglessly.  
  
He stared at the damp little village before him. Buildings. People walking about. Turning around. Looking at him. He clutched the bag to his chest and tried to concentrate.  
  
_All right, Ire. You need supplies and directions. Get yourself oriented. Talk to the locals, find a shop, get used to how things work here. You can do this._  
  
More people began to notice him and send him curious glances. A Bosmer man smiled encouragingly, and seemed on the verge of coming over to initiate conversation.  
  
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do any of it.  
  
Ire made a small, despairing noise, pointed himself in a random direction and walked straight out of the village into the swamp.


	3. breathe

Iriel leaned against a rock, only distantly registering the wet ground soaking through his pants. Had it always been this bad, dealing with people, being a fellow person at them? Surely not. He had spent two decades practising, before his arrest, and was sure he hadn’t spent the entire time being a failure at it. He’d had issues, yes, but they’d been manageable, he’d coped. Functioned. Why couldn't he do that any more? Why were their faces so panic-inducing, their eyes so horrendously painful upon him?

Imprisonment, he knew, was part of it. Of course it had affected him, he had been foolish to expect otherwise. Ridiculous to think he could simply pick up his life where he had left off. Even if he were in Cyrodiil, even if they allowed him back into the Arcane University, even if Reu were… a completely different person than he turned out to be. He, Iriel, wasn't the same.

Some things were nothing new. For example, the black pit of shame and guilt inside him. That had been there for as long as he could remember. Fed, throughout his life, by constant, small, oozing trickles of disapproval. Everyone receives criticism, he knew, but he wondered sometimes if other people had ways of purging it, neutralising it somehow. He only seemed able to accumulate it, store it up endlessly. Whether he agreed or disagreed with it was immaterial, he couldn't get rid of it. The best he could do was contain it, and try to avoid falling in.

In the beginning, his parents had been its primary source. The deepest, darkest depths of the pool were theirs alone, filled with slime so viscous it was impossible to move in, and noxious, lurking things. But there had always been plenty of people offering to help fill it, even with just a word or a glance.

When he was a child, he had tried keeping a mental list of all the things he was apparently doing wrong, in the hopes of, one by one, fixing them. But in order to fix something, you need to understand the problem, and Ire rarely did.

He was walking funny? Well, how did other people do it? He was moving, so what did it matter?  
He said a bad word? Which word? Why was it bad? Why have a word if you can’t use it?  
He offended someone by staring at them? Why? How many seconds were you allowed to look at someone? Wait, _not_ looking at them could be rude too? How could anyone figure out this stuff? If they couldn’t even explain to him how to do it right, why tell him he was doing it wrong?  
  
He gave up on the list when he realised the very act of listmaking was feeding the pit, since he’d never managed to cross a single thing off it, and, increasingly, didn’t understand why he should.

Then he hit adolescence, and it turned out that everything prior had just been the warm-up act for being a queer teenager completely unequipped to conceal this fact from his incomprehending parents and conservative town.

He’d found ways to cope. He’d had to, or allow the pit to engulf him whole. He'd constructed a brittle veneer of arrogant defiance, supported by a precarious network of hopes. This won’t last forever, he’d told himself. You can survive this, you’re going to escape. He had a plan: the Crystal Tower. Get there, he told himself, and everything will be all right. And then he did… and it wasn’t.

He’d thought it would show him what freedom finally felt like. That he could be himself, say and do whatever he wanted, without worrying what anyone thought. He had believed that there, of all places, his magical skill and academic reputation would be the only thing that mattered. So he was in for a very rude awakening when this turned out not to be the case. Not when you fell in love with the son of a very important Tower financial donor, anyway. Less than a year after arrival, he found himself transferred to the Arcane University amid a storm of scandal.

Iriel was extremely shaken by what he considered his “exile” to Cyrodiil. He really did try, then, to adjust himself to what people seemed to want from him, insofar as he could tell what that was. Indeed, at first he had done nothing but study for months, barely leaving the campus, determined to prove himself as a scholar, and avoid confirming gossip. Eventually, though, driven by a mixture of curiosity and isolation, he’d begun to poke his nose into the Imperial City. It had been exciting, but overwhelming. So many people, so many eyes. It was then that his problems with illusion magic began.

Contrary to Ergalla’s assumptions, Ire had never studied illusion magic in any great depth. It wasn’t considered a serious magical discipline by most serious mages, and Ire, at that point in his life, aspired to Serious Magery. Illusion wasn’t about altering the fundamental building blocks of the universe, it was about altering appearances. Cheap tricks, basically, with a nasty undertone of deception and artifice. It wasn’t until the day Ire found himself overcome by panic in the middle of Talos Plaza, that he discovered the therapeutic possibilities of illusion.

He had been taking an order of potions to a local trader, when, amid the crowds, the fear had descended. Hyperventilating against a wall, trying to calm his racing heartbeat, he'd begun scrabbling through the bottles for potential relief. He had been aiming for one of the Restore Fatigue potions, as in his desperate state, he thought it might help him breathe. Instead, he accidentally swallowed one for invisibility, and… suddenly nobody was staring at him any more. It was like a weight lifted from his chest. Ten minutes later, he had gone through four more bottles, but he felt functional again.

Invisibility potions require diamonds - too expensive to make a habit of. Ire began to practice invisibility cantrips obsessively. The spells lasted only a few seconds at first, but gradually he could make them hold for longer. Long enough to help, when he needed them. Gradually, he discovered that more subtle and specialised effects were possible with illusion, allowing him to adjust his “dosage” according to the situation.

Sitting damply in the swamp outside Seyda Neen, Iriel thought back to his conversation with Ergalla. Illusion master? Him? Master was not the word that Ire would have chosen. “Dependent” would be closer, although he had been cold-turkey for a while now. Not for the first time, he rubbed his chapped wrists, and marvelled at how light they felt. During his imprisonment, they had been permanently locked into magicka draining bracers. Could he still cast. Could he even recall any spells? Could he anything?

To say that imprisonment had been hard on Iriel would be like saying that blowtorches were hard on butterflies. His carefully-constructed self-esteem structures collapsed under the weight of guilt and shame, and not only that of the crime he was accused of. Jail retroactively validated every drop of hatred ever sent his way. It was an endorsement of every negative judgement anyone had ever made about him, even those he thought he’d shrugged off years ago. The pit bubbled ever higher, and dragged him under its oily black surface. He had nowhere else to go.

He’d spent a year and a half there. Now he was finally, suddenly, shockingly, traumatically, out. But how much of himself was left? A half-remembered necromantic study came, ridiculously, to mind, about bodies left in parts of the Black Marsh. Depending on the alchemical properties of the bog, corpses could either remain perfectly preserved indefinitely, or decompose to skeletons in mere hours. He suspected that he was not the former.

_Come on Ire. If you can remember random studies you skimread years ago, you can remember one simple spell._

He flexed his hands, experimentally. His illusion spells were usually cast instinctively, almost unconsciously. He couldn’t remember the sequence in his mind, but perhaps it was still in his fingers. He inhaled deeply and forced himself to think about the village again, about stepping out into that sea of eyes.

There was a soft green glow. Through it, he saw his hands, a bare fraction less solid than before. It was almost imperceptible, but it was enough for Iriel, who let his head fall backwards against the rock, overcome with relief. He was going to be all right.


	4. falling

Much later, certain people would gravely refer to this period of Iriel’s life as one during which he “lost himself”. And Ire would nod obediently, while privately reflecting that in certain, strange ways, it had been rather wonderful. It’s true that he didn’t remember many details of the time he spent sleeping rough in the Bitter Coast - or rather, he _only_ remembered details. The taste and smell of fresh crabmeat. The sun setting across the water, bathing everything in rose-gold light. The spongey texture of the luminous mushrooms he collected obsessively, and the ssschlucking sound they made when he yanked them out of the damp soil to lay them out in order of size and colour on the moss.

His conscious mind, cast adrift on an overwhelming ocean of sensation, became reduced to scattered thoughts and isolated impressions. But while the part of his brain that did things like worry about the future and appreciate washing had surrendered to the numb, in other ways, he felt intensely alive. Ire had always been a bookworm, avoiding anything to do with nature. His alchemical samples arrived washed and pre-cut. Now, after an eternity in a stone, chain-ridden darkness, he was amazed to find himself falling into a hazy kind of love. He didn’t care that he was cold and wet. He only cared about the sunsets and the mushrooms, and all the different types of fern fronds there were to discover.  
  
It’s hard to know how long this might have gone on for, but after a few days, he found the moon sugar.  
  
Ire would be the first to agree that the moon sugar was a mistake.  
  
In his defence, however, it’s difficult to identify mistakes, when your sense of self has disintegrated. What do you have to compare anything with? You can’t hold the mistake up against your personality and think, “Nope, this action definitely doesn’t match, this isn’t the sort of thing I would do at all”.  
  
All Ire knew was that he had found two small cloth bags of crystalline white powder underneath a crate on a small jetty, and that when he put a finger in and licked it, everything got _better_. The sunset that evening was more colourful and beautiful than any sunset he’d ever seen before. After dark, the bioluminescent purples and greens of the mushrooms swirled and danced violently. When he tried to follow, he found himself falling: into the glowing colours, into the soft, yielding swamp, and not caring, because when he spat mud and rolled over onto his back, he found himself falling into the sky.  
  
The night skies of Morrowind are stunningly beautiful, viewed sober. Moon sugar rendered them a religious experience.  
  
Ire spent the next few days slowly working his way through the bags. It’s probably best not to dwell on the exact details of his thoughts and actions. Drug taking is excruciatingly boring to observe from the outside, and impossible to accurately describe from the inside. If I say that he spent long hours lying in the mud, staring at the fractal patterns at the end of fern fronds, I’m sure you can fill in the rest for yourselves. Let’s skip to the end.  
  
He came to, slowly, in grey, pre-dawn light. The mudcrab had gone out. (While Iriel didn’t know the first thing about building a campfire, he _had_ managed to eke out a small fire spell, and it turns out that if you bombard a mudcrab corpse with enough of them, it will burn steadily, if stinkily, for several hours.) He was wet through, and shivering uncontrollably. He reached for the bag, but it was already licked clean, finished the previous day. He tried to sit up, and couldn’t, partly because he was really quite solidly attached to the mud, and partly because _everything fucking hurts oh sweet Mara save me I’m dying my HEAD oh gods oh shit.  
  
_ Iriel experimented with various therapeutic methods, including:  
  
\- Trying to eat some crabmeat, which he immediately vomited.  
  
\- Casting the only healing spell he could remember over and over again. Since it was incredibly weak, he only succeed at it once every ten tries, and the pain returned the minute the spell effect ended, it wasn’t a sustainable solution.  
  
\- Praying fervently to any deity who might be listening to please have mercy and kill him. Iriel had never been much for religious faith. Where he came from, the gods were not thought to actively involve themselves in the lives of their worshippers. This was part of what made them so admirable. Iriel sympathised with their isolationism, and usually maintained that if the Aedra were happy to leave him alone, he was happy to return the favour. Now, he remembered hearing that Morrowind’s local divinities took a more hands-on approach, and decided he could really use some of that about now.  
  
\- Curling into a ball and sobbing.  
  
None of it helped, and the worst part was that he was thinking clearly again, which meant addressing his situation was unavoidable. He finally managed to sit up long enough to put his head in his hands. What was he _doing_? More to the point, what should he do now? Lying back down and dying was tempting, but Ire hadn’t survived this long by letting  _that_ part of his brain have its way.  
  
After a few false starts, he succeeded in getting to his feet. His legs felt limper than boiled marshmerrow stalks, but slow movement proved possible. Returning to Seyda Neen wasn’t an attractive option, but during his time in the area, on clear days, he’d seen a city across the water. Something like a city, anyway - huge constructions looming on the horizon, their angular bulks connected by stone bridges. Ire supposed that there would be people there, but he couldn’t sit in a swamp for a moment longer. Not like this, stone cold sober and racked with pain.  
  
Carefully packing his mushroom collection into his bag, Iriel set out in search of structure.


	5. slide

“I TOLD you already, you filthy n'wah! I don’t have any more, and I’m not going to get any! It was a one-off, do you hear? Now SCRAM!!!”  
  
The bartender punctuated the end of his sentence with a hard slam of his fist on the bar, and Iriel backed away, waving his hands. “I’m sorry! I meant no offence! I just thought that if you did happen to get any more, you might be able to contact m–”  
  
“OUT! Before I get the boys here to throw you out!”  
  
Ire didn’t need to glance at the collection of nasty-looking Camonna Tong Dunmer lurking about the bar to know that he wouldn’t enjoy that. He ran like hell until he was a good couple of cantons away from the No Name Club. 

We may be catching Ire at a bad moment, but he is actually doing far better than he was two weeks ago, when he first dragged himself across the bridge to the Hlaalu canton of Vivec. Back then, he'd only avoided being immediately thrown out again by an Ordinator because the Ordinator in question had just cleaned his armour and couldn't bring himself to touch the stinking, elf-shaped mass of swamp in front of him. Opting for a quiet life, he had firmly pointed Ire in the direction of the paupers’ cantons.

Vivec City was huge, hollow, and forbidding. Somewhere so dominating, everyone is insignificant in comparison to the architecture. Which meant less visibility for Ire. People scurried from place to place, too busy trying not to lose their bearings to pay much attention to anyone else, let alone a bedraggled Altmer with no memorable characteristics. At least, not once he'd scraped together enough gold for a bath and a clean set of clothes. Ire found that for the most part, nobody wanted to talk to him, or even look at him. It was great. He still habitually maintained a low-level chameleon spell whenever he had to go anywhere too busy, but nothing too extreme, or difficult to keep up. Just five to ten percent, enough to take the edge off his visibility.  
  
Unfortunately, his pressing need for more moon sugar meant that he was having to talk to rather more strangers than he would prefer. The withdrawal was even more acute on the second day, involving not just the original aching and weakness, but adding in sensitivity to light and constant nausea. In the cold light of day, Ire realised that he must have been using moon sugar, and that this probably hadn’t been his smartest move. But his top priority was surviving, and if that meant continuing to take sugar until he was in a better position to kick the habit, then that’s how it had to be. After all, he had no idea how long the withdrawal would last, and he needed to be functional.  
  
About the only thing Ire knew about moon sugar was that Khajiit knew about moon sugar. However, the Khajiiti man he saw vanishing into the St Delyn pauper’s housing block didn’t seem keen to share his druglore with a random stranger. “Sugar?” he rasped at Ire. “Why do you ask this one about sugar?”  
  
“Because you’re a Khajiit.” said Ire, seeing no reason to beat around the stereotype.  
  
The Khajiit rolled his eyes. “This one does not use sugar and cannot sell you any. Go away, Altmer.”   
  
“I’m really, really, sorry,” said Ire, which was true, although mostly for a whole number of reasons that didn’t involve the Khajiit. “But I have to find some. I’ll do anything. Please. I can’t cope any more, please, I just need some and I’ll never bother you again.”  
  
The Khajiit sighed. “Are you deaf? This one does not have sugar for you.”  
  
Ire had a brief, guilty pang of regret that he’d never learned a Charm spell. He had to settle for making the most pitiful face he could muster, which was pretty damn pitiful, since it involved no acting whatsoever.  
  
“You are pathetic,” the Khajiit growled, but it was a soft growl, and not entirely without sympathy. “This one still does not have any sugar for you, but he has heard that Brathus Dals at the No Name Club was trying to get rid of some. He is a Dunmer, you will please note, and not a Khajiit.” Ire noted, gratefully, and went.  
  
  
  
The No Name Club was a Camonna Tong bar, and Iriel was not welcome there. He could tell by the way people kept sidling up to him and saying “This is a Camonna Tong, bar, n'wah. You’re not welcome here.” Ire persisted, however, and Brathus Dals dragged him into the back of the bar as soon as he started talking loudly about moon sugar.  
  
“Who told you?” he hissed, trying to size Iriel up. “You can’t be an Ordinator, who sent you? You want your throat cutting, is that it?”  
  
It turned out that Dals had acquired the moon sugar from the corpse of one of the many non-Dunmer who died suspiciously in the vicinity of his upstanding establishment. He knew it was valuable, but was wary of getting caught selling it, since aside from the fact moon sugar was illegal, there was the whole issue of the corpse it had been found on. Dals was reasonably convinced that Iriel knew nothing, and genuinely wanted the sugar, but he didn’t trust him not to get himself in trouble while holding it, and spill the details of where he bought it.  
  
The risk/reward compromise Dals settled on was to agree to sell the sugar to Iriel, but at ten times its usual street value. Ire, having no idea how much he would normally expect to pay, boggled. “I don’t have that much!”  
  
Dals knew an easy mark when he saw one, and curled his lip, showing a lot of yellowing teeth. “Better get it, then, f'lah. Or I’ll sell to someone else.”  
  
Here, then, began Iriel’s slide into crime and moral degradation. Which might seem a strange thing to say about someone already convicted of grand larceny (and murder, incidentally), but if you haven’t already figured out that Ire was an innocent victim of that particular debacle, then I have failed you as a narrator of his character. Iriel was terrified of authority and plagued by guilt at the best of times. It did not prevent him now, in these straitened circumstances, from taking to petty thievery to support his drug habit, but it did mean he felt really, really awful about it.  
  
He felt worst about the alchemy equipment, though in all honesty, this was because it had involved the most risk, and therefore stress. But eventually, a mage had left her lab long enough for Ire to make his move, and with the aid of a lot of frantically reapplied Chameleon spells, he had managed to get his sack of alchemical whatnots back to the one-room hovel he was crashing in. It was in the St Delyn canton, and Iriel was sure something was terribly wrong with it. Although it was empty, no one ever turned up to demand he either get out, or pay rent. The neighbours also kept giving him dark looks, but Ire couldn’t separate that far enough from his regular paranoia to know whether that was in relation to the room.  
  
Once Ire had his private lab set up, his stealing, fortunately for his blood pressure, could be reduced to slinking into big houses and storerooms, and pocketing any ingredients lying around. Rich people, he found, spent a lot of time and effort protecting what they considered to be their valuables. But few of them bothered to lock their kitchens, and losses were quickly replenished by servants, each assuming someone else had taken the last of the hackle-lo. Iriel was then able to convert the ingredients into potions, and the potions into money at the many traders around Vivec. He wouldn’t have been doing too badly, financially, if it wasn’t for the fact he then converted the money straight into moon sugar.  
  
Except now Brathus Dals doesn’t have any more sugar, and we find Iriel getting chased out of the No Name Club with menaces. Returning to his threadbare room, he re-checked his supply, although he already knew exactly how much was left. Three and a half bags. It wasn’t good. He had been unable to find anyone else in the city who would admit to having any for sale. Equally worrying, lately, he found he needed to take more, in order to achieve the same effect. Iriel heaved a sigh. He hid his stash again and headed out, flicking a lock spell over the door as he closed it.


	6. trap

Dro'Zaymar was home alone, as Iriel had expected. The Khajiit didn’t go out much, and Ire had never seen any other visitors entering his St Delyn hovel. He knew better than to ask questions. Dro'Zaymar had a quiet manner, but a certain precision to his movements and uncompromising directness in his gaze hinted that he was not to be underestimated.

“Irrrrriel again,” he growled.  
  
“Iriel again,” said Ire lightly, knowing the growl was not to be taken personally, but was a Khajiiti speech artifact. He rather liked hearing his name said with such vibrato. “I have a book I want to ask you about.”  
  
He pulled a book labelled _Words of Clan Mother Ahnissi_ from his bag. “It’s a Khajiiti creation myth! But there are some fascinating changes from those in other mythologies. I wondered if you could explain something to me about how–”  
  
“No.”  
  
Ire pouted. “I didn’t steal it, you know. I bought it from Jobasha. You can ask him yourself, if you don’t–”  
  
“Dro'Zaymar believes you.”  
  
“Then what’s wrong?”  
  
A sigh. “Irrriel, you know this one has no interest in joining your scholarly debates. Is this really what you have come here for?”

Ire glanced away, embarrassed. He had fallen into the habit of visiting his Khajiiti neighbour from time to time, purely to have someone to talk to. Dro'Zaymar tolerated his company with a mixture of diffidence and occasional concern for Iriel’s health and safety. One night, under the influence of a potent mixture of sugar and loneliness, Ire had tried to persuade Dro'Zaymar to educate him about certain peculiarities of Khajiiti male anatomy he had heard about. Dro'Zaymar had told him, not unkindly, that Ire didn’t want that as much as he thought he did, and had gently but firmly sent him back to his room.

“I suppose not. The book was an excuse. I just… don’t know what to do. I’m nearly out of sugar, and I can’t find out how to get any more. Are you _sure_ you don’t know anyo–”  
  
“IRRRRIEL.” This time, it _was_ a growl. “I have told you many times that you must give up the sugar. For Khajiit, it is sacred, but you are Altmer. It is not for you. Your body is affected differrrrently. You must give it up before it damages you perrrmanently.”  
  
“I tried to give it up! And I told you, I can’t! Not now, not yet. I… I’m barely keeping it together as it is! I told you, just as soon as I can–”  
  
“You told Dro'Zaymar a pack of lies you tell yourself to make it easier to take the sugar. There is no good time to stop taking the sugar, because the nature of sugar is that it is sweet! But it is a trap for you, Irrrriel, and you must get yourself out of it. It will hurt very much - ask the one who chews off his foot to get out of the trap! It will hurt, yes, and you do not like to hurt. But you must do it to free yourself, Irrriel, because to be free is sweeter than any sugar.”  
  
“You’re choosing to lecture me, then. You won’t help me.”  
  
“This one _is_ helping.”  
  
“No, you’re not! You’re lecturing me about things I’m well aware of already, thank you very much. I’m asking you a simple question, and you’re refusing to answer, because you think you know–”  
  
“RRRrrrrrr!” Dro'Zaymar’s eyes flashed, and Ire was frozen to the spot. The Khajiit continued, tail lashing and ears flat against his head: “You want sugar, do you? Fine, then. Go to Moroni Uvelas in St Olms, and ask _her_ about sugar. She knows all about it - and how much it costs!”  
  
  
  
Iriel’s bad feeling about asking Moroni Uvelas about moon sugar was vindicated when she burst into tears at him over the fishmonger’s counter. “So you’ve heard, too? Oh, it’s too much to bear. He’s never been gone this long before. If I could throw every drop of skooma and grain of moon sugar into the mouth of the volcano, I would!”  
  
A tear dripped onto something with too many tentacles. Ire shuffled his feet. “Um. Actually, I was wondering if…”  
  
She blew her nose on her apron. “I’m sorry. Did you want something?”  
  
“Well…” Iriel considered his options for escaping the conversation. Most of them involved agreeing to purchase some kind of dead marine creature. He settled for asking, as nonchalantly as he could, “Someone is gone?”  
  
“Yes, my husband, Danar, is missing again. It happens with him. See, he has a problem with skooma, although he swears he’s been trying to stop. Last time he disappeared it was for days, and when he came back, he didn’t look so good. I’m worried that he might have been infected with corprus, or something equally horrible. Do you think you might be able to find him for me?”

Ire inwardly cursed Dro'Zaymar to Oblivion and back, but out loud, he said the only thing possible under the circumstances, which was, “Yes, of course I will.”


	7. choice

There was a bright side, Iriel told himself desperately, as he recast the Water Walking spell keeping him on his preferred side of the river of sewage. At least if he was down in the underworks searching for drug addicts, then it was possible he might find some who would share their moon sugar source with him.  
  
He didn’t. He found the long-dead corpse of an elf, lying half-submerged in filth. It was no longer possible to identify race or gender. Its skin was crusted with yellow residue, and parts of its body were horribly swollen, in ways that went beyond mere water damage. He stumbled backwards, covering his mouth, and ran until he got back to the ladder.  
  
Where he stopped, drumming his fingers against a rung, considering his pounding headache, and the way even the sound of his nails on the metal made him wince. Steeling his nerve, he resolved to keep looking around.  
  
_Perhaps there are other users down there, perhaps they have a stash somewhere. If I were filthy, desperate, drug-addicted trash - and oh, what a coincidence! - where would I–_

“Looking for something?” A female Khajiit was watching him from her perch on top of a stack of crates.  
  
He jumped. “No! I mean… yes.” Ire couldn’t see any reason to lie to her, even if he’d been any good at it. “I’m looking for moon sugar. I heard there might be people down here who used it.”  
  
She jumped to the ground and landed soundlessly. “Not any more, kitten. That poor stray over there was the last of them. Hard to get sugar in Vivec in these times.”  
  
“What do you mean, in these times?”  
  
She smiled. “Information isn’t free, kitten.”  
  
Iriel sighed, and searched his bag for gold. “Will ten drakes do? I know nothing about bribing protocol.”  
  
“It’ll do, but only because the information is not very good, and Addhiranirr would hate to cheat you.” She grinned, to show it was a joke. He handed over the gold, and it vanished somewhere about her person.  
  
“Addhiranirr thanks you kindly for your fine custom,” she purred. “And now, she can tell you that unfortunately for all the sad little sugarteeth in Vivec, the sugar smuggling route here has been very bad lately. Almost nothing at all getting through from the Bitter Coast.”

“So how can I get hold of any? Please, you must know someone!”  
  
Addhiranirr held out a paw, smirking. Ire counted another twenty gold into it, and she continued. “Varrr, varrr, varrr… You might try Hla Oad. Always sugar coming into Hla Oad. Or if you prefer to keep your paws dry and stay out of the dirty swamps, you could try Addhiranirr’s good friend Tsiya in Balmora. Tell her Addhiranirr sent you.”  
  
  
  
Iriel was deep in thought as he crossed the bridge back to St Delyn. He had two choices, as he saw them. He could stay in Vivec, take Dro'Zaymar’s advice and kick moon sugar. After that, he’d have a real income, enough to purchase his ingredients legally, and generally drag his life above board again. Perhaps he could register with the Mages’ Guild, get proper alchemical certification, and (his brain recoiled at the thought, but he forced himself to consider it) set up a shop or something.  
  
Or, he could drop everything and run off searching for drugs to feed his stupid, expensive, destructive habit. Put like that, the conclusion was obvious. He needed to get a grip, and face up to it before he ended up dead in a sewer himself. He’d go and tell Dro'Zaymar he’d been right, and apologise. Ask for his help quitti– _Auri-El, what the fuck is that noise??_  
  
Walking through St Delyn canton, Iriel could hear… chanting? It was coming from one of the pauper’s housing units, and as Ire got closer, he saw a red light coming from behind the door, which was ajar. Curiosity overcame reticence. He knocked. “…Hello?”  
  
The chanting noise intensified. They sounded like Dunmer voices, but… _off_ , somehow, and he couldn’t place the language. He pushed open the door.  
  
  
  
Ten minutes later, Dro'Zaymar almost fell out of his hammock, as Iriel burst into his room, a flailing, incoherent bundle of weeping and babbling. It took quite some time, and a mug of bittergreen tea, before Ire began to make any sense.

“A cult? Herrre, in St Delyn?” Dro'Zaymar looked unconvinced.  
  
“I don’t know! Is two people a cult?” Ire scraped his hair back from his sweat-drenched forehead. “They were naked, and chanting, and covered in… chunks of what looked like… flesh! They had an altar! What is that, if not a cult?”  
  
The Khajiit furrowed his brow. “Daedra worshippers, perrrhaps. And you say you killed one of them?”  
  
“I _did_ kill her, don’t you believe me? She… she attacked me, and I couldn’t get away, I… I… pushed fire into her… until she… she…”  
  
Through his tears, Ire felt Dro'Zaymar’s clawed hand pat his gently. “You didn’t have a choice. It was self defence.”  
  
“I know, but… she… she was a Dunmer. They’re extremely fire resistant, and my… my spell wasn’t powerful to begin with. She wasn’t even hitting me hard, she seemed completely out of her fucking mind! She never stopped, even as her flesh was burning, and… and… ” He gave a shuddering sob. “It took a really long time. And during the whole thing, the other one, the man… he just stood there, grinning!”

Ire stood up jerkily, almost knocking over his tea. “That’s it. I’m getting out of Vivec. I can’t stay here, I… I just _killed_ someone, what if her friend comes after me? No wonder nobody was living in my room, with neighbours like this! What if the Ordinators come after me? I am NOT going back to jail, I can’t, I’ll _die!_ ”  
  
He lunged for the door, but Dro'Zaymar caught his arm. “Get off!” Ire hissed. “You can’t stop me!”  
  
“This one knows. He just wishes for Iriel to take care of himself.” The Khajiiti man leaned forwards, and licked Ire’s cheek gently. Then he let go, and Iriel continued his wild exit from the room.


	8. simple

Iriel entered the Vivec Mages’ Guild with a hunted expression, and a sack containing everything he owned. Which was mostly alchemical apparatus, and a number of books on mythology and religious philosophy he had been unable to resist buying (well, mostly buying). He hadn’t read any of them - his evenings were taken up with moon sugar - but the act of owning them helped him pretend that he was still an academic, that he might resume his studies aaaany time now.

“Which way to get guild transport to Balmora?” he demanded of the room at large, barely catching an alembic escaping from his bag.  
  
A grey-haired Dunmeri woman sized up Iriel critically, exchanged glances with her colleagues, and stepped forward. “Hello, my dear,” she said brightly. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you strike me as someone with magical interests. Did you know that by joining the Mages’ Guild, you can access a large number of benefits and discounts, to aid you in your arcane endeavours?”  
  
Ire hesitated. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for all that now. I only want transport to Balmora, and I was told this was the quickest way.”  
  
“Oh, it most certainly is! And if you are a guild member, you can enjoy reduced rates on all guild transportation, not to mention other magical services. You will also benefit from the support of your colleagues in your research, and…”  
  
She carried on talking, but all Iriel could think was that he should have cast a stronger Chameleon spell. While he _had_ been considering joining the Guild, he really didn’t feel up to interacting with people - let alone mages - right now. He took the path of least resistance. “All right! I’ll join, but then I really must get transportation.”  
  
Six forms and declarations later, he was being dragged by the Dunmer woman, Malven Romari, all over the guild, as she insisted on introducing him to everyone. “Last, but most certainly not least, quite the reverse, in fact…” she said, pushing him before a large, bald Imperial in a hideously embroidered purple robe, “you have the honour of standing before Trebonius Artorius, Imperial Battlemage, and Arch-Mage of the Vvardenfell Mages Guild. My lord Arch-Mage, this is our newest Associate, Iriel of Lillandril.”  
  
It took all Iriel’s self-control not to reflexively cast the most powerful invisibility spell he could muster. _Make eye contact, Ire. It’s rude not to. Or is it the other way around? Please don’t let him want to do that awful hand shaking thing Imperials do. Just stand still, don’t say anything and try to look normal until he goes away._  
  
“Greetings, young Altmer,” boomed the Arch-Mage, as Ire tried to remember the order you moved your facial muscles in to smile. _don’t ask me anything don’t ask me anything._ “And what area of study do you specialise in?” _shit_.  
  
Iriel desperately cast his mind over the unopened books in his bag. “I…uh… lately, I’ve been reading, um… Chronicles of Nchur…dmz.”  
  
Trebonius raised his eyebrows as Ire waited in terror. “Ahh, yes, of course! A classic of the field!” _SHIT he’s read it shit shit._ “In fact, I was discussing it with Edwinna Elbert only last week.” _I’m doomed._ “So, we have a new Dwemer scholar among us! Wonderful, wonderful. Good to get some fresh minds on the old mysteries, eh?”  
  
He smiled indulgently, and Ire nodded in desperate response. “Yes! Um… yes. Anything I can do to, er, yes. Definitely. Just say the word.” _please don’t_.  
  
“Enthusiasm! Wonderful. Well, let’s see. Hmm… Find out about the disappearance of the Dwarves. There’s a fine job for a young Associate, eh?”  
  
“What??! I mean… what, sir?”  
  
“It’s a simple task, surely. Just go to some ruins and… erm… and find out what happened to them.”  
  
“I… see. I’ll… get right on that, then.”  
  
At this point, Malven had the good sense to steer Iriel away. Once out of earshot, she whispered, “Sorry about that. Between you and me, the Arch-Mage is a bit… well… let’s just say you shouldn’t take anything he says too seriously. He doesn’t know the first thing about the Dwemer, and he certainly doesn’t read books. Last year he asked me to dig a tunnel to the mainland so the Telvanni couldn’t interfere with Imperial trade. I just tell him it’s progressing according to schedule. Come on, let’s get you transported out of here, shall we?”  
  
“Please,” said Iriel, “please.”


	9. sanctuary

Tsiya was an asshole, Iriel had decided.  
  
Ire collected insults and obscenities the way some people collect ceramic figurines: obsessively, and with a constant eye for how they might be arranged and combined, for maximum impact. Tsiya, though, wasn’t even worth the effort of a good multi-part curse. She was just a common-or-garden asshole, to borrow Reu’s favourite term.  
  
He had eventually located her Balmora house among the near-identical sandstone cubes on either side of the River Odai, but her doors were locked, and knocking brought no answer. On the third day of calling and begging, almost out of moon sugar, he had cracked, and forced the door magically. She had slammed it closed again, almost on his fingers, apparently sitting behind it all along.  
  
“Tsiya, _please_. I know you’re listening. Addhiranirr said you could–”  
  
“Addhiranirr needs to stop sending trouble Tsiya’s way.” hissed a voice. “Tsiya has enough problems. Get lost!”  
  
“I’ll help! Please! I’ll do anything!”

It turned out that although Tsiya did have a connection for moon sugar, she also had a six-thousand gold bounty, and was in hiding. Her connection was over a week late, but she was too scared of the guards and sugar-deprived to leave the house to search for him. After a long, suspicious exchange, she finally agreed to give Iriel the location of their usual rendez-vous point outside the city in exchange for the remains of his sugar, and a promise to return as quickly as possible with the delivery.  
  
Tsiya’s directions had been vague enough that it took him most of the day, but as darkness fell, he was back. This time she opened the door as he approached and dragged him inside hastily. “Was the High Elf seen by anyone?”  
  
“My _name_ is Iriel, and no. Your friend’s dead, though, and all he had was this.” He handed her the package. Ignoring the contents, which Ire had already ascertained to be an empty skooma pipe and a brief note, Tsiya carefully inserted a claw into part of the wrapping. With a sharp flick she opened a hidden layer, and removed dozens of small packets of moon sugar. They sighed in unison.  
  
“So it was there all along!” Ire breathed. “I had no idea!”  
  
“Of course the annoying High Elf did not. If he had found it, he would never have returned.” Ire didn’t even try to contradict her. _I’m an asshole, too, these days._

“Iriel’s share. Now he goes away.” She pushed five bags into his hands.  
  
“Hey!” He struggled, as she tried to eject him. “You said fifty percent, that’s not– let me count how much is there!”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, Tsiya will check it again. Though she doesn’t know why the High Elf is so concerned. It is only sugar, after all.” She grinned, unpleasantly. “Moon sugar is for silly little kits who don’t know anything better. If Iriel really wants to lick the Lunar Lattice and taste the tears of God, he should try skooma.”  
  
  
  
Iriel veered unsteadily along the bank of the river with the ten bags they had eventually settled on hidden in his shirt, and the half-bag of his they had shared before he left swirling in his bloodstream. (“Shared sugar to cement Tsiya and Iriel’s friendship!” she had wheedled, though Ire suspected that “sharing” applied to her using his sugar, but never the other way around.)

Deciding it would be a bad idea to return to the crowded Mages’ Guild dormitory until he had come down a little, Ire sat on the stone bridge, and watched the stars reflected in the moving water. Sometimes he felt that such beautiful reminders of his own cosmic insignificance were the only thing that calmed him, let him feel like he could keep hold of the thin thread of his sanit–“HEY N'WAH!!!”  
  
Ire flinched, sugar and shock completely fumbling the chameleon spell he was already reflexively casting. He looked up, just as an ash yam hit him on the side of the head. High above him, he made out several Dunmer faces leaning over the edge of the Council Club’s rooftop seating area.  
  
“Heeeeeeey n'waaaah” A mocking, drunken sing-song voice rang out, and others joined it.  
  
“Whatcha doing there, n'wah?”  
  
“Are you having fuuuuuun?”  
  
Laughter, and a smash as someone dropped a bottle off the roof. That had been an accident, Ire thought, but the next one aimed at his head might not be. He tried to gain enough control of himself to stand up and leave without falling into the river.  
  
“We know about your filthy kind, n'wah!” This voice had an edge to it. “Bringing your filthy… filth into our country.”  
  
_Oh, here we go again,_ thought Ire, before realising that he didn’t actually know which “here” they were going to again. It could be a drug-addict thing they were objecting to, that seemed possible. On the other hand, he knew these men were Camonna Tong, who hated all outlanders on principle, so it might be a race thing. Something in their tone, though, gave him the sickening feeling it might be a gay thing. He had no real evidence for this. Only the fact he’d provoked reactions like this even back in the Summerset Isles, where he’d been drug-free and racially assimilated. He’d long ago given up trying to figure out what he was doing to make it visible. Apparently there were ‘normal’, straight, ways of standing and walking and sitting on bridges at night, he just didn’t know them.  
  
He got the Sanctuary spell on the third try. There was no use trying to hide now that they’d focused on him, but he had other methods. This one helped ensure that even if they could see him, they couldn’t easily touch him. He started to cross the bridge, to the side where the Council Club wasn’t.  
  
“Yeah, thass right, gerroutovvere!”  
  
“Go back to the South Wall where your filth belongs, you filthy fetcher! Fetchy… fith… Filthcher! Haaaahahahaha…”  
  
The South Wall? Ire hadn’t had any inclination to explore Balmora’s bars - his interactions with the Council Club’s clientèle had seen to that. Apparently, though, they disapproved of the South Wall.  
  
_Hmm. At this point I don’t care if it’s a gay bar, a skooma den, or a gay skooma den. There’s half a chance they might not hate me, or think I’m irretrievably broken, and right now, that sounds wonderful. Better than being a sitting target for Camonna Tong, or worse, going back to face the  - ugh - mages._  
  
Decided, he headed in the direction of their derisively pointed fingers, ignoring the chorus of howls in his wake.


	10. outside

The South Wall Corner Club didn’t _quite_  live up to Iriel’s lurid speculations. At least, there were no open displays of homosexuality or drug use going on, although later, Ire did catch a few glances that made him wonder. Initially, though, he just felt… nothing. He blinked in the yellow light, and squinted at what was almost certainly a brunette Nord woman leaning on a barrel, chatting amiably to a blonde Bosmer man. They glanced up at him, smiled briefly, then went back to their conversation.  
  
It took him a minute to realise that the “nothing” he was feeling was the absence of hostility, and that it was a good thing. Once he did realise, he was afraid to move, lest the feeling of safety be immediately shattered by something.

“Hey, there.” The Nord had noticed his hesitation, and was smiling at him. “You OK?” She looked closer. “Ooooh dearie me. Arathor!” She beckoned to the Bosmer. “Look at his eyes. Somebody’s been at the suuuugaaar!”  
  
“Not another one,” the Bosmer laughed. “What is it with this town?”  
  
They sounded more amused than angry, and Iriel clung to that. “I’m sorry,” he said, distantly, “I just need somewhere quiet to… sit down for a few hours. Until the Camonna Tong go away. Then I’ll… go back to the Mages’ Guild. He flapped a hand at where he’d last seen his pocket. "I can buy something. I think. If it helps.”  
  
Arathor and the Nord, whose name was Sottilde, exchanged glances. “No worries,” Sottilde said. “You’re safe from those dickmaggots in here. For now, at any rate.” She elbowed her comrade. “Arathor, look sharp! Take him downstairs, find him a drink of something that won’t make him vom, and get Habasi to have a look at him. She’s way better with this mind-alterin’ malarkey than I am.”  
  
Sugar-Lips Habasi, contrary to her nickname, seemed completely sober - or maybe everyone just seemed sober in comparison to Iriel. He allowed himself to be parked on a stool, where he sipped from the cup of water pushed into his unresisting hands. Habasi circled him, dark-striped tail twitching, asking him questions about how much he had taken, and how long ago, which he answered as best he could.  
  
“Extra-High Elf doin’ OK?” Sottilde’s tousled chestnut head appeared around the stairwell.  
  
“Yes, yes, yes.” Habasi nodded. “Nothing so serious. He simply needs to let it wear off. Return to your post, we can’t let our guard down now.”  
  
Something about her words puzzled Ire, but he wasn’t in any condition to put two and two together just yet. He sat on his stool in silence, wishing everything would sway less. He was in that unpleasant state when the mind has been shaken out of the euphoric phase of the sugar experience, but the physical effects remain, hanging around, causing trouble.  
  
He cast surreptitious glances at the other inhabitants of the bar’s lower room. A  middle-aged Breton in a silk shirt was minding the bar, humming cheerfully as he poured a glass of wine for an Imperial man. A blue-robed Argonian was examining Habasi’s arm… no, wait, not Habasi, a different Khajiiti woman, lighter in colour, but with more gold rings in her ears.  
  
“Sssssth, Chirranirr, hold _still!_ ” he heard the Argonian say. “How did you get such a burn?”  
  
She shrugged, wincing as he pressed gently on a furless, irritated patch of skin on her arm. “There was a trap on the chest. This one got the order for the client, so it was worth it.”  
  
“You sell so many probes, you didn’t have one left for yourself?” tutted the Argonian, flicking his fingers, and spreading blue light over the wound.  
  
Chirranirr laughed, and was about to say something, but caught Iriel’s stare, and stopped. Iriel looked away quickly, feeling like an intruder, which only made her laugh louder. It was the sort of laugh that warms a room like a hearthfire, and Ire’s mouth twitched up at the corner. “Don’t you laugh at Chirranirr!” she teased. “That’s Chirranirr’s job.”  
  
“What?” cried the Breton from across the room, “You mean we’ve all been doing your job for you, all this time? Where’s my pay?”  
  
They all laughed then, and even Ire made a small snorting noise he tried to suppress, in case he offended anyone. But nobody seemed to care. Later, Arathor came down, and started doing dagger tricks on the bar, and even Habasi had a glass of shein and relaxed a little.  
  
Eventually, Ire put his empty cup on the floor, and fidgeted his fingers together. He was feeling mostly sober, albeit tired. He wondered how late it had become. He should go. He should… his train of thought rolled to a halt, because Habasi was watching him very closely, with a funny look on her face. He glanced down. His hands were semi-transparent. _Whoops_.  
  
“You favour illusion magic, do you?” She sidled over, and crouched on her haunches, so her face was level with his. “Very useful thing, illusion magic. Don’t you find?”  
  
“Um…” Iriel’s brain had finally resolved the mathematics of the situation. “I’m in some kind of thief base, aren’t I?”  
  
“You are indeed,” said Habasi, “and the Thieves’ Guild has uses for people with your kind of talents. What say you, Iriel? Sottilde tells Habasi you’ve no love for the Camonna Tong.”  
  
“I…” Iriel felt torn. He had, oddly, enjoyed his evening in the South Wall. He had sat by himself, watching other people’s lives go by. Friends enjoying themselves, chatting and taking care of each other, while he remained on the outside, an observer. Iriel considered this normal for social events. What was so different, here, was that he hadn’t felt judged. They didn’t try to make him talk, they didn’t seem to think he was weird for sitting on his own. They just accepted his presence, with a collective shrug, and carried on with their world. Now, they were inviting him in. Asking if he wanted to become a part of it, already knowing that he was a socially inept oddball with a sugar habit, and not caring. _Yes_ , he wanted to say, _yes, yes, yes.  
_  
Except.  
  
_You’ve been here before,_ part of his brain was telling him. _You made friends with thieves, and look where it got you? They were only pretending to like you. It was all an illusion - you know, those things you’re supposed to be a “master” of? They used you. Reuben was a thief, and he wormed his way into your heart, and made you trust him. Then he betrayed you, and threw you away. You don’t know these people, and you don’t know what they really want from you. You can’t let your guard down now._  
  
“Thank you,” he said. “Really. Thank you for taking care of me, but I can’t join. I’m sorry.” He stood up, relieved to find his legs worked as advertised.  
  
“Hmmm.” Habasi nodded slowly and flicked her tail. “So be it. But if the Camonna Tong are your enemies, you would be wise to find some friends who can support you, watch your back. Habasi is just saying. You know where we are.”  
  
“I’ll think about it.” he said, and meant it.


	11. books

Iriel awoke in a narrow, scratchy bunk in the apprentices’ dorm of the Balmora Mages’ Guild. Galbedir was already up - her bunk was empty - but above him, he could hear Ajira snoring like a dead ogrim full of bees.  
  
He’d been dreaming he was trapped on the moon (he wasn’t sure which one) chasing a singing sweetroll, when Reu had appeared to rescue him, begging his forgiveness, and pledging eternal love.  
  
Oh, please, he told his subconscious sternly. _Singing sweetrolls on the moon, fine. But some things are_ _totally unrealistic._  
  
He slid out of bed, hoping he could get some work done before Ajira woke and invented more pointless chores for him to do. The Balmora guild was really starting to wear on his nerves. Everyone was feuding with everyone else, and trying to make him take sides. All he wanted was to be left alone to read the few Dwemer books he had found at the local bookseller, but noooo.

The more everyone told Ire to forget about the task Trebonius had assigned him, the more he wanted to prove them all wrong by actually completing it. He arranged his texts on a table: _Chronicles of Nchuleft, The Ruins of Kemel-Ze, Nchunak’s Fire and Faith._ Either his brain was damaged by the sugar, or none of them contained any particularly devastating insights. He hoped it was the latter, but either way, he might have to visit some actual Dwemer ruins to make any progress.  
  
Iriel chewed his lip. The books were full of references to the dangers of the ruins, and the various researchers who’d died there in horrible ways, caught out by traps, or crushed by automata.  
  
Ire understood the principles of Destruction spells. He had successfully conjured various elements under laboratory conditions, with accuracy, if not intensity. In a real, life or death battle? Could he? The blackening grin of the St Delyn cultist rose before his eyes, and he clamped his fingers together, stomach churning. Surely there were other ways?   
  
As he shuffled his meagre notes, something fell out. It was the coded document he had been given in Seyda Neen. _Ugh, this again?_ He had failed to decipher it several times, and was now trying to forget about it. He opened _Chronicles_ again, hoping to–  
  
“IRIEL!! Deliver these potions to the Temple for Ajira!” He slammed the book shut, grinding his teeth.  
  
  
  
At the Tribunal Temple, he peered nervously into the antechamber, hoping he could drop the potions with one of the healers and escape quickly. Honestly, the Temple would be a more pleasant place to study than the the guildhall, if it wasn’t for–  
  
“IRIEL!!” _oh no too late it’s her she caught me again._  
  
Sister Llathyno came bounding down a corridor at an alarming speed for her age, grey robe rasping against her skinny limbs. “Almsivi in every hour, my child! Did you have time to read those Lessons of Vivec I lent you?”  
  
Rooted to the spot, Iriel cursed his inability to lie under pressure. “Well… yes, but…”  
  
“Blessed are we who serve Almsivi! And what did you think of them? Did they open your heart to accept grace without limits?”  
  
“Um.”  
  
She drew herself up proudly, almost reaching his shoulder. “You must speak from the heart, my child. From the heart, the light, as the Book of Dawn and Dusk teaches us. Keep no secret from your Judge’s scale. Tell me, do not Lord Vivec’s words touch the soul more deeply than the conscious mind can comprehend?”  
  
Ire’s brow contorted. “I… suppose you’re right about that…”  
  
“Enter the rhapsody of the God-Poet!”  
  
“…in that they make a weird kind of sense when you’re high on moon sugar, but the rest of the time, it’s pure gibberish.”  
  
“Oh, how rarely wisdom rules our hearts! Speak none but good of the Gods!”  
  
“I didn’t say I didn’t _like_ them, just not necessarily in a theological sense. I mean… the one with Molag Bal and the, uh… biting. Are you sure it’s a _religious_ text?”  
  
She fixed him with an absolutely immobile stare. “Rumours flow from the House of Troubles, sinner. Sermon Fourteen depicts the Pomegranate Banquet, a powerful and thought-provoking allegory about the dangers to the Dunmer people.”  
  
Her stonily humourless expression had an unfortunate effect on his nerves, and he barely suppressed a snort of laughter. “Really. So the part about their _spears_ …”  
  
“Is. An. Allegory.”  
  
“It was hot, I’ll give it that. I can’t say I found God, but it did make me wish I had a boyfriend.”  
  
“Gather no seed in the fields of Hell! Fate, monstrous and empty, the whirling wheel of evil! Consider your end, mortal! How black my heart, roasting fiercely!?”  
  
“All right, all right, I’m leaving!”  
  
  
  
Back at the Mages’ Guild, Masalinie the Breton guild transporter waved him over. “Iriel, I have a message for you from Edwinna Elbert, the guild steward in Ald'ruhn. She heard you had a copy of Chronicles of Nchuleft, and asked if you would be kind enough to lend it to her.” Seeing Iriel’s reluctant grimace, Masalinie added: “She phrased it as a request, but it’s a command. She’s your superior, so if she wants the book, you had better hand it over, before she takes it from you another way.”  
  
“I know, I know.” Ire was already half-way to fetching it. “Believe me, I’m more than accustomed to the politics of magical academia.”  
  
In all honesty, Iriel didn’t mind giving Chronicles of Nchuleft to Edwinna. He had read it twice, and couldn’t find anything relevant to his project. Still, he tried to play up his sacrifice as much as he could, emphasising the difficulty of getting any work done in Balmora. He was rewarded when Edwinna suggested he move to the Ald'ruhn guild, where they had a spare private room. He knew the price would be running errands for her, but he decided they couldn’t be worse than Ajira’s, and since Edwinna was a _bona fide_ Dwemer scholar, he might actually learn something. It didn’t take long until he was proved right.  
  
Edwinna had noticed his affinity for illusion spells, and decided to make use of them to “borrow” a book from a colleague in Vivec. Ire was more nervous of encountering Trebonius again than of the theft itself, but either way, it gave him good reason to remain invisible the entire time he was there.  
  
It wasn’t until he was back in Ald'ruhn, that he examined the book, _Chimarvamidium_. He quickly discovered, with a thrill, that it was about the Dwemer, with hints of very interesting content. He had to read it properly and take notes, but how? Hovering on the balcony, he could already hear Edwinna downstairs, asking if he was back yet. Hiding in his room wouldn’t save him for long.  
  
He turned to the guild guide who had just transported him, thankful for the gold Edwinna had been guilted into giving him in exchange for _Chronicles_. "Erranil. How much would I have to pay you to tell Edwinna I’m not back yet, if she asks?”  
  
The Altmer woman laughed conspiratorially, and covered her eyes with a hand. “Don’t worry, Iriel. I haven’t seen you, but don’t be too long. You know how she gets. By tomorrow, she’ll be zooming over to Vivec to look for you herself.”  
  
Ire could have kissed her. Instead, he grinned, cast invisibility, and made for the front door.


	12. silence

It was early evening, and the Ald Skar Inn was bustling with people from all over Ald'ruhn. There were traders kicking back after a long day, pilgrims earnestly discussing the best route to the Grace of Pride shrine, Redoran nobles slumming it… and at a paper-covered table right in the furthest corner, Iriel, frantically scribbling notes from a large book. This was not his natural habitat, but it had the overwhelming advantage that Edwinna Elbert would never look for him here in a million years.  
  
You would think that the loud atmosphere of the bar would make concentration impossible, but Iriel had an Illusion spell for that. Not a visibility-based one this time, as that would end with him getting accidentally sat on. Instead, he had cast Silence on himself. This was why he didn’t notice for several minutes that someone had slid into the chair opposite, and started talking to him.

It was the smell Iriel noticed first. Guarskin leather and sweat made up a lot of it, the rest being the local saltrice beer known as mazte. This latter was coming from the intruder’s breath, indicating he was several bottles deep already. Ire made extremely reluctant eye contact.  
  
If pressed, Ire would have guessed the Dunmer to be slightly older than himself, though he would, in fact, have been wrong. He had greasy black hair to his strangely-embroidered collar, and prominent eyebrows, which he was using to punctuate his enthusiastic monologue. Iriel sighed, and let the spell lapse.  
  
“…ding, there?”  
  
Ire tried politeness first. You never knew. “I’m sorry, I had a Silence spell on, and didn’t hear you. I’m actually extremely busy, so if you wouldn’t mind–”  
  
“You had a what?”  
  
“A Silence spell. Because I was trying to work. In silence.”  
  
“Awww, you mean you missed the whole bit about the ancestral lands, and the blight diseases, and all the other stuff?”  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m afraid–”  
  
“No, no, you have to hear it, it’s great! Let me start again. It’s really good, you’ll see. Hang on, I need to do the serious bit first. Serious. OK. Serious now. Right. Starting again… now!”  
  
He smoothed his hair back from his forehead, which didn’t really improve it any, and cleared his throat. “Bless and be blessed, outlander. You’re not aware of it, but right at this very moment, an Ashlander child is dying. It might be from blight, it might be starvation. It might be an Imperial or Great House army cutting them down in their parents’ arms, as they drive them from their ansh… ancestral lands. It might be any number of things, because here in the cities, you think you can ignore the suffering of the Velothi people. Ashlanders are the invisi–”  
  
“What’s an Ashlander?” interrupted Ire, desperate to stem the flow of speech somehow.  
  
The Dunmer stopped. “Seriously?” He gave Iriel an incredulous look. “D'you live under a rock, or something?”  
  
“Mages’ Guild. So, yes, in effect.”  
  
“Ugh… Forget it, then. I’m not teaching ancient history to outlanders, my throat’s too dry. D’you wanna buy me a drink, or what?”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“To make me go away. Usually thass how it works. I mean, you’ve had the entire speech almost twice now. Not my fault you weren’t listening the first time. Thass the way I see it, anyway.”  
  
Ire opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a moment, he said, “So you don’t actually care about the Ashlander children, whoever they are, you just want free drinks?”  
  
“HEY.” A warning finger was waved, unsteadily under his nose. “Don’ you dare tell me I don’ care about my people. I care about them, and, I _also_ care about drinks. D'you see any reason it can’t be both? Do you, n'wah?”  
  
Iriel rubbed a hand across his eyes. “If I give you money, you go away, is that correct?”  
  
“Yeah, probably.”  
  
“I’m going to need more than ‘probably’, here.”  
  
“Well, I was just wondering… what’re you reading, there?” The Dunmer squinted, trying to make it out upside down, then gave up, and pulled his chair around the table to read it the right way up.  
  
Ire frantically tried to close the book without losing his notes onto the floor. “Stop it! Don’t…!!” He scrabbled in his pockets, and pushed a handful of gold across the table at the stranger. “Go get a drink and stop bothering me!”  
  
Alone, Ire realigned his papers, opened the book and tried to find his place. _“A Dwemer of eight can create a golem, but an eight of Dwemer can become one.”  
_  
He copied out the line, grimacing at the awkward translation, and wishing the original Aldmeris had been reproduced. Not that his Aldmeris was particularly good, but at least he could have–  
  
“An eight of Dwemer? Whass that mean?”  
  
Four large bottles of mazte thunked down onto the table, and Ire bristled. “Would you _please_ get those off my notes! And above all, _don’t_ read over my shoulder!” He stared at the table, despairingly. “Four bottles? Why do you have so many bottles? I thought you were going to leave me alone.”  
  
“This was the number of bottles I could get for all the gold you gave me!”  
  
“You didn’t have to spend it _all_ on beer!”  
  
The Dunmer looked nonplussed. “We’re in a bar,” he said. “Anyway, four’s lots, so I thought I’d share them with you!”  
  
“You should have saved them for the poor suffering Ashlander children,” muttered Ire, fortunately too far under his breath to be audible to his new friend, who had sat down, and was busy cracking open the bottles.  
  
“Stop it,” Iriel said, when he saw the cork come out of the second one. “I don’t want any! I’m trying to work!”  
  
“But we’re in a bar,” repeated the Dunmer. “What work? Can I help?”  
  
“No!!”  
  
“But you’re reading about the Dwemer! Are you trying to find out where they went?”  
  
“Nn… well, yes, actually, but I really don’t need help from… from… I don’t need help.”  
  
“Isss fascinating, innit?” The Dunmer took a long swig from his bottle, then pulled his chair closer. “You can see their towers all over the place, back home. I used to spend hours lying in the grass, staring at them and wondering.” He was reading the book again, but Ire had given up trying to stop him. “Hey, whass this bit about?” Ire followed his finger, and read:  
  
_“…there is a suggestion that the Dwemer race as a whole had some sort of silent and magickal communication. There are records of the Psijic Order which suggest they, too, share this secret. Whatever the case, there are no documented spells of "calling.” The Cyrodiil historian Borgusilus Malier first proposed this as a solution to the disappearance of the Dwemer…“_  
  
"I don’ see how that could have anything to do with it,” the Dunmer was saying, “I mean, some of our wise women can do that too, but it wouldn’t help them make everyone vanish! I can’t see how, anyway.”  
  
“Do they really?” Ire was cautiously intrigued. “Do you know how it works, or what type of spell it is?”  
  
“No idea.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“So, are you getting anywhere with finding out where the Dwemer went?”  
  
Ire was on the verge of saying something cutting about _why_ he wasn’t getting anywhere, but in the end, he just sighed. “No. I’m sure there’s something important here that I’m missing, but I can’t make sense of it.”  
  
He eyed the bottles of mazte, which suddenly looked very inviting, despite the knowledge that alcohol went straight to his head, and was invariably a source of regret.  
  
  
  
Barely an hour later, he was allowing himself to be shoved, giggling, up onto the edge of the Skar, the immense crabshell that dominated the city of Ald'ruhn.  
  
“We gorra climb the shell, iss tradissshional!” came a voice from below, as the Dunmer dragged himself up after him. Crawling on all fours, shouting and laughing as they (inevitably) slipped, they eventually made it to the centre, and lay on their backs, staring at the night sky.

  
  
Ten minutes after that, he was yelling at a young couple who, looking for some privacy, had climbed onto the shell further down, and begun to kiss.  
  
“STOOOOP IIIIT!!! That’s SOOOO RUUUUDE!!! Do you have ANY IDEA how long it’s been since I got LAIIIIID?” Behind him, the Dunmer was laughing so hard he started rolling down the shell.  
  
  
  
Ten minutes after _that_ , he was bracing his feet on the dusty ground beneath the sheltering edge of the Skar, pulling frantically on the arm of his drinking companion, who seemed intent on going to sleep.  
  
“You can’t lie down, you’re in the street!”  
“Sssss fine. Jusss leave me.”  
“It’s not fine! You can’t stay there, the guards won’t like it!”  
“Sss wha’ I alwayss do. Juss leave me, I’m sleeeeepy.”  
“No! I won’t let you!”  
  
Iriel was in that monomaniacal stage of tipsiness, where once he fixated on an idea, it was impossible to make him let go. He set his jaw, such as it was.  
  
  
  
Boderi Farano, proprietor of the Ald Skar Inn, was not convinced. So very unconvinced was she, that she demanded double-rate for the room in advance, and removed anything remotely breakable from it before she’d let them into it.

“This is a single room,” she said reproachfully. “All our rooms are single rooms. We believe it promotes serenity of mind and purity of body.”  
  
Ire ignored her. The Feather spell was beginning to wear off, and he quickly staggered the last few paces, supporting the barely-conscious Dunmer. When they got close enough to the bed, he let the other elf topple forwards onto it, where he immediately fell into a deep slumber.  
  
Iriel stared pointedly at the landlady until she went away, then collapsed to the floor. He had intended to return to the Mages’ Guild at this point, but the warm room and dim candlelight made him feel that he couldn’t possibly move. His gaze fell on the Dunmer, who, in sleep, looked far younger than he had before. What was he doing here, apparently alone and penniless? They hadn’t even got round to exchanging names.  
  
Ire debated whether he ought to take the Dunmer’s boots off, to save the bed linen, but on examination, they were made from some kind of chitinous bugshell that he was reluctant to touch. In any case, who knew how long he’d been wearing them? Best not to get involved. Finding a spare blanket underneath the bed, Ire rolled himself up in it and quickly fell asleep.  
  
The sugar-withdrawal hit, as dawn broke. He had missed his usual dose the previous night, and now he was feeling it. The Dunmer hadn’t moved, but his breathing was deep and regular.  
  
_Shit… where’s Chimarvamidium?_ Panic seized him, but then he saw it under the blanket. Perhaps he had some lucky stars after all. Dragging himself to his feet, Ire grabbed the book and headed for his sugar and his own bed. Seconds later, he crept back in, left 50 gold on the bedside table, and nodded farewell to the Dunmer, whom he had no intention of ever seeing again.


	13. legs

“Anaaaaarenen…” The slightly high-pitched, panicky quaver in Ire’s voice was unmistakable.  
  
Anarenen sighed, and put down his alembic. “Oh, Iriel, not _again._ ”  
  
“It’s in my room!”  
  
“Is it a big one?”  
  
“Yes, and it’s on the _bed_ , please, Anarenen!”  
  
Anarenen looked up at Ire, who was hovering on the stairs, looking pathetic. He put his hands on his hips, and tried to sound stern. “You know it will go away on its own eventually, don’t you? It’s probably already vanished back to wherever it came from!”  
  
“Yes, but I ran outside and shut the door, and now I’m too scared to look.”  
  
“Iriel, I promise you, it is far more scared of you than you are of it.”  
  
“Please will you come and get rid of it? Please?”  
  
“Oh, very well. But this is the last time.” Anarenen removed his gloves and headed up the stairs, while Ire gibbered incoherently about horrible spindly legs. “Why on Nirn must you keep _summoning_ skeletons if you are so frightened of them?”  
  


“It’s the only Conjuration spell I can do,” Ire said dolefully, as he repaid Anarenen by helping with the potions. “But I need to get better at it, so that I can use them to fight for me. Illusion doesn’t help much once things get right up in my face, and I have to go to…” (he paused, but only momentarily, he’d been practising this) “…Arkngthunch-Sturdumz for Edwinna.”  
  
Anarenen looked at Ire, who was struggling to grind frost salts, having to wield the pestle with both hands to get enough force. He looked as if he’d fall over if you coughed on him. “You certainly need _something_. I do not think Dwemer animunculi are susceptible to pleading eyes and tragical expressions, which are your primary offensive weapons, as far as I can tell.”  
  
Ire smiled slightly. “I know,” he said, “it’s unfortunate, but those only work on highly intelligent targets of exceptional taste and compassion.”  
  
Anarenen had another go at stern. “Very funny, Iriel, but I am serious. You are extremely good at getting other people to take care of you, but it is no way to go through life. You are a grown man now, and need to learn to act like it. Iriel? Are you listening to me?” Ire had stopped wrestling with the frost salts, and was staring at the wall. “Iriel? What is it?”  
  
Ire shook his head. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that… if _this_ is the reality where I’m _good_ at getting people to take care of me, I can’t imagine what my life is like in the reality where I’m bad at it.”  
  
Edwinna Elbert trotted in. “Iriel, there you are. How are your preparations coming along?”  
  
“Oh… fine…” Ire tried to sound confident. “Anarenen’s been helping me with my conjuration,” he added, avoiding the other Altmer’s eye.  
  
Edwinna nodded briskly. “Excellent, excellent. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble. Would you do me a favour, and discreetly return _Chimarvamidium_ to Sirilonwe’s room for me? It’s of no further use to my research.”  
  
She handed Iriel the book, frowning slightly. “Between you and me, I’m a bit concerned about Sirilonwe. The book was absolutely covered in mazte stains! If this is how she always conducts her research, I’m amazed she gets anything written at all. Although it does explain that paper she submitted about the private language of the silt striders.”  
  
Iriel’s smile was a thing of abject horror. “Yes, Guildmistress. Right away.”


	14. plan

Iriel was ecstatic! He emerged from Arkngthunch-Sturdumz panting but triumphant, the Dwemer tube safe in his pack, along with several valuable gems and artifacts. He had spent days readying himself for this expedition. Practising spells, making potions and packing, carefully balancing the desire to be prepared with the need to travel light. He had successfully followed Edwinna’s directions, taking the silt strider to Gnisis, then heading north until he could see the towers looming. Crossing the metal access bridge to the ruin, he had felt nervous, but ready. He had a plan. He had cast a Mark spell in the doorway, so an emergency exit wouldn’t mean trekking all the way back from civilisation again.  
  
Once inside, he had successfully adapted his approach to suit the situation. Centurion spiders and spheres fell quickly to frost spells, as his study of _The Ruins of Kemel-Ze_ had indicated. However, as he had feared, there was a Steam Centurion, a huge mechanical warrior that shrugged off every spell he threw at it. Knowing it would be suicide to let it get close, he fell back on invisibility, and was relieved to find the robot immediately lost interest, and wandered off.  
  
_All brawn, no brains,_ thought Ire smugly.

  
  
Iriel was somewhat deflated. He had strolled into Ald Velothi in an unusually sociable frame of mind, buoyed by his success in the ruin, and been disappointed in the local hospitality. Not that he was looking for drunken debauchery, but he had thought he might get a hot meal, a warm bed, and an audience. Ire’s social interaction generator had two main settings: “off” and “overdrive”, and it was currently in the rare condition of being set to “overdrive”. He was in the mood to babble enthusiastically at anyone he could get to listen, regaling them with thrilling tales of Dwemer constructs, and his fledgeling theories about the different numerical designators etched into their sides.  
  
All he found were a few grim fishermen’s shacks and a Redoran outpost where a sour-faced Temple priestess offered to meditate with him. They didn’t allow alcohol, never mind have a tavern. Ire was issued a pilgrim’s ration of a small, hard breadroll, and a small, hard bunk, both of which smelt faintly of muckspunge.  
  
_Never mind,_ he told himself. _It’s only for tonight. What matters is that I succeeded._  
  
  
  
Iriel was annoyed. Contrary to the Ald Velothi locals’ insistence that the exterior of the nearby Daedric ruins were perfectly safe in daylight, and a wonderful tourist attraction, he had turned a corner and come face to face with a frost atronach. Taken by surprise, he had run like hell, paying little attention to where he was going.  
  
_Well_ , he thought, as the water gushed into his shoes, _at least I’ve found the river. I can follow it south until I get back to Gnisis. It should be a pleasant, scenic route._  
  
  
  
Iriel was utterly miserable. It was dark, and raining as if the sky hated him, in particular. He had water walked south for hours, and was now worried that the poor visibility might have caused him to pass Gnisis by completely. He was tired, hungry, soaked to the skin, and, for all he knew, lost.  
  
All of this contributed to his decision, coming across a cave entrance on a small island, to throw caution to the wind (and rain, and cold, and distressingly large insects) and shelter inside. Where, in the damp, oppressive darkness, someone swiftly cracked him over the head, and knocked him out cold.


	15. claws

“Sarvur, do y… …. ….?”  
“… …o idea who… … … …ously a mage. What if the Telvanni… … …”  
“I don’t th… …. … …Altmer, so… … …”  
“… …do now, boss? He might… … … others.”  
“… … ight. The Assarnud route isn’t secure anym… …have to move… … orget the slaves, they’re too… … … have to focus on the shipment… … out tonight.”  
“… … … zgulub. I’m on it. C'mon, you… …. …”  
“… … …im?”  
“Bah, just… …ing of value and… …. ave pen.”

  
  
Many hours passed.  
  
  
  
Iriel wasn’t sure if he was dead, or if he just really, really, wished he was. Everything was dark and painful, especially the side of his head. He whimpered softly, and at the sound, an answering scuffling, scratching noise came from the darkness. Ire froze. He was not alone. In fact, he was surrounded. Above him, he made out several pairs of glowing eyes, and as he stared, unable to move, claws reached out to him from the blackness. He turned his face toward the acrid wetness of the cave floor, and waited for death.  
  
Something touched his hair, parting it gently, inspecting his head injury, careful not to cause him pain. He heard a soft hissing.  
  
“Does the softskin yet live, Akish?” The voice was dry, reptilian, but not unpleasant. An Argonian, he realised.  
  
“Yesss,” came the reply, another Argonian. “I think he’s waking up.”  
  
It was an hour before Ire was in any state to talk, and another before he could sit up, but his eyes gradually became accustomed to the darkness. He was in a slave pen with six others, three Argonian and three Khajiit, all rake-thin and half-clothed. The Argonian called Akish continued to sit by him, talking gently, and encouraging him to stay awake.  
  
“Why do you bother with that one?” a Khajiiti voice said, at one point. “He will die soon. We will all die soon. Our captors have gone, and they aren’t coming back. You heard them. We cannot be moved quickly like the skooma, and so we are left to starve.”  
  
There was silence for a minute. Iriel lay, listening to the slow, echoing drip of water falling into a pool somewhere. Then Akish said, “While there is life, I will do what I can to pressserve it.”  
  
A couple of the Khajiit tried to force the door, but weakened muscles and clipped claws were no match for reinforced wood and iron locks. An Argonian named Huzei, claiming to be a bard, tried to raise their spirits by singing a bawdy song involving fish, but everyone else firmly made it clear that silence was preferable, and he soon gave up.  
  
Later, they slept, all together in a heap for warmth, the cold-blooded Argonians in the middle, and the furriest Khajiit on the outside.  
  
Time passed. They awoke, one by one, still in darkness, still hungry, still trapped.  
  
“What did you do, before, Akish?” Ire asked, as the Argonian checked his head wound again. “You have hands like a healer. Were you?”  
  
Akish gave a soft hiss that wasn’t quite a laugh, but came close. “No. I was an architect.”  
  
“Oh. Then… am I structurally unsound?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
Ire received this information without emotion. Everything he had been carrying was gone. Gold, potions, scrolls, amulets. All the Dwemer artifacts, of course, including Edwinna’s tube. His sugar, which, right now, he missed most of all. _Oh Iriel, you’re so good at getting people to look after you._  
  
He was trapped in the darkness with his thoughts again, he was back in the jail. He was balancing on the edge of a deep chasm, and the only thing keeping him from falling was that at least he wasn’t alone.  
  
“Are we really going to die, Akish?”  
“That depends.”  
“On what?”  
“On you.”  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
Akish held out her wrist, placing it next to Ire’s. “What do you see?”  
  
He felt like a child, back at school. And as usual, he knew the answer, but resented being made to say it.  
  
“I tried. I can’t cast. It feels like a thousand blades going into my skull.”  
  
“You mussst. You are the only one with a chance.” Akish tapped the slave bracer with her claw, and left him alone.  
  
  
A little while later, Iriel took a deep breath, and stood up. He walked to the door, and examined the heavy lock for longer than was really necessary. A few of the others started to watch him. “Don’t!” he snapped. “Don’t look at me. Please. Nothing’s going to happen, so don’t get your hopes up.”  
  
He focused on the lock, and began to formulate the Open spell in his mind.  
  
_it is a trap for you, Irrrriel_  
  
Instantly, the white hot pain seared into his brain, and, gasping, he let the words fade, the spell lost. He leaned against the door, sucking in air.  
  
_and you must get yourself out of it_  
  
He began again, trying to anticipate the agony, to let it pass through him without overwhelming him.  
  
_It will hurt very much - ask the one who chews off his foot to get out of the trap_  
  
This time, he got to the fourth syllable, before the pain suddenly intensified, forcing him to his knees, retching, sweat and tears pouring down his face.  
  
_It will hurt, yes_  
  
He began again.  
_  
and you do not like to hurt._  
  
He couldn’t fight the pain, couldn’t ride it out. He could only let it take him, drown him, bury him, let it scour away everything except the part of his brain forming the words of the spell. It forced its way into the darkest parts of his mind, into the Pit, where it churned up the black tide, joining with it, telling him he _should_ be in this pain, because he deserved it.  
_  
But you must do it  
  
_ Once he deserved it, it was easier. _  
_  
_to free yourself, Irrriel,_  
  
He screamed.  
  
_because_  
  
The lock clicked open, and Iriel fell into the black depths of the Pit.


	16. door

“Iriel!” He was sitting on the ground and Akish was shaking him, but he couldn’t quite lift his head from where it was resting on his hunched knees. “We ssearched the tunnels and found the key to our bracersss, and the back exit to the cave! We are free!” A feeling of pressure about his shoulders… a hug, he thought. Then the pressure released. A pause.  
  
“Iriel, I am not leaving until I am sssure you are all right.”  
  
 _You selfish piece of shit, now you’re stopping them escaping._ _Get it together._  
  
He raised his head and moved his eyes in the direction of Akish’s face. He smiled. It didn’t seem to have the intended effect. “I’m fine,” he said, as firmly as he could. “Don’t worry.”

Akish didn’t move. “You don’t ssseem fine to me. You should leave with usss, now. Our plan is to follow the marshes along the coassst, to remain unseen, but with a ssslight diversion, we could take you to–”  
  
 _They’re risking their safety to look after you, because you’re so fucking good at getting people to look after you, because you’re too fucking pathetic to do it yourself. Be. More. Convincing._  
  
He unfolded suddenly to his full height, which was considerably taller than the Argonian. “No! Really. It’s fine.” He worked to make his voice sound warm and encouraging. “I’m just a little tired, but in a few minutes, I’ll be going.” He walked around a bit, to prove he could, and waved an arm in the direction of the exit. “The door’s right there. I’m an adult, and I can get home on my own. Thank you for everything, but there’s no need to baby me. You have a long journey, and you need to get moving.”  
  
Akish gave him a long look, but knew the others were waiting for her. “Very well. May the Hissst guide you, friend.” He nodded like a puppet, incapable of further words, feeling only a small stab of relief.  
  
As the other former slaves followed Akish through the door, one of the Khajiit darted over to Iriel. “Ra'Mhirr found these in the cave, dropped by the smugglers in their haste. Ra'Mhirr… thinks you need them more than he does.” The Khajiit met Iriel’s eye, knowingly, and transferred two small bottles into his hand. Then he ran to catch up with the others.  
  
As soon as Ire knew they were gone, the makeshift edifice he had built of his limbs collapsed to the ground again. He lay with his head in the dirt, staring at nothing.  
  
 _why now, please not now. you can leave, you’re not trapped, you can just walk out.  
_  
 _what’s the point. you lost everything. why do you pretend you can do things, why can’t you anything, why do you anything_.  
  
 _please don’t be like this now you have to get out of here, the door’s open, you just have to  
  
_ _what’s the point  
  
_ _i don’t know_  
  
He looked at the skooma. He was well aware it was dangerous, but at this moment, his unadulterated brain was even more dangerous. He needed to change it somehow, or he might never find the willpower to get up off the floor and not die.  
  
Ire chose life.


	17. VCDRKAA

_Ahnissi tells you_.  _Gather no more terrible at the last laugh of bones became wet. Watch as the fields of wisdom. His head found its body had become wolf-headed women and a secret from your Judge’s scale. Forge Darkness into bone shapes. CHEMUA, the stars or mathematician. We can sometimes be something devoid of Veloth, my skin, its steam-driven energy. It is no stopping this debris. With a string of seduction and the darkness of bitter cold and I am sure, as much, I smiled with a very poisonous herb. The holy one by Vivec made of belly-magic. They have been useless to Faith. Better to you. Oh, how rarely wisdom rules our hearts! Rumours flow from Muatra._ _Vivec says unto three, six, nine, and two littermates. The plant and leaving their beautiful wildflower whose name comes from above, where the Dwarven telescope. To mix his lips touched his sides. The magical properties with the glory of the end lost in astonishment. Many Khajiit will tuck a long ago when their finds for a common in Morrowind. They attain a piece of my narrow stairway, worshipping leaves which impressed even my foe. Its golden arm came crashing down, striking sparks from the fleshpots of some kind. Here were wonders beyond even crack the Imperial City, I leaned against the touch. “Steam! Steam!”_ _Observing the first monster like a bit new spear. He was little hope and manticore. Fifth: Look on a river that the ways of the King of the last laugh of time: static change, if you see the light; from the warrior-poet asked: How came forth. Born of stolen souls. They say the few pieces of this secret here is taken. And even to the wettest fishes. So why is a river that looked on one of the Ashlanders to surprise was clear who serve Almsivi. Three mouths sing Mercy, Mastery, Mystery. Gather no seed in the Disputed Lands. They wrapped about Truth. Your house is the mouth of Molag Bal. Sparkling gold in the first meet this secret. Here is estrangement from bleeding, where all their powerful philosopher-sorcerers “Kagrnak” in his great journey was faceted like your odd needs: feathered, scaled, or justice not wearing any clothes. Ladies singing high notes, men singing high notes, men singing high notes, men singing high notes, men singing lows, Implying that they were well known. Now I circled the light green and debates from the usual tedious complications involved in a reserved, elegant old Dwarven ruins in the piles at the confusion, and we could I picked up to slip between the real exploration of the darkness of the ingredients you must have explored every Dwarven noble, maybe even my next lecture. Moon Axle was the whirling wheel of his giant-form, to join the mention of Scamps came you come again and taken into the love is for our own,“ mused Karenithil Barif in a rare scholarly moment,_ _leaving a more than ruin to his fury. Anyone struck it. Its agility was clear who told him with an hour before, we can actually be hit in every hour. Walk always in the interests of Hell. Watch as he had become necessary and the stars to some, not to read, and demons and therefore troubled for eighty days and pain quite delicious_. _I heard wild tales of the resulting concoction._ _Three Hands, three Hearts, three things. And Fadomai and the Clan Mothers? Three Hands, three Hearts, three Hearts, three Eyes. Count only the Heart. How black my heart, the light; from that Azurah had nothing. I knew that Ayem was now that this point the dim ranks of love. Vivec and Molag Bal, made of dispatching me. He had before me. He had what he did not sure just how much glass it took to the giant raised dais, his giant-form. AE HOOM. The huge fists lifted for proof of purple energy crackled across the severed feet on his eyes. Keep no seed in Morrowind. The ending of injustice. Death does not wearing any clothes. Ladies singing high notes, men singing high notes, men singing lows, Implying that the site of power: AE ALTADOON. Or do one. The ancient libraries need Cornerstone four has a sinned, You’ll find it nearly is sin. But, pray, do not. The ending of belly-magic. They say the Velothi were watching all by violence. ‘For I mean preceded by a kitten?” This magic I PUT A STAR WHAT I PUT A girl remembers who can stand against us? Fate, monstrous and eight, though headless._   _Keep no secret from the biters_. _Molag Bal rose up at all. I am sure, as the divine to the giant golden king stood before me to be a cheerful salute to share Hell, my escape! As I looked on my ears, I am needed to one side as the wall with frightening speed. The Cyrodiil historian Borgusilus Malier with his feet a fiction written in ancient tibrol tree first proposed recovering the annotated calendars of love. Vivec left a moment but only illuminated a hiss and found a fiction written by Master Arum._ _He was the marshes and a guild now forgotten, the faults of ruling king of the rest that they would always keep secrets, and they sometimes be a nix-hound, yet to the forbidden teachings of the Skooma Cat, for the folly of a wife smile, the Pomegranate Banquet brought to her favored daughter. Vivec said, 'Is this world is shaped like a pair of breath so Ahnissi tells me and left in uncertainty.’ Enter the Moons and empty, the ghost gilds with these words, Fadomai said, "Lorkhaj makes for them.” And Fadomai tore out the Heart of her pregnant again._


	18. language

Iriel was in an unfamiliar bed. Specifically, a bed in a small, yellowstone chamber, furnished with wall hangings and an imposing old Dunmer in a mage’s robe. The latter looked up sharply from his book as Iriel raised himself on his elbows and looked around in confusion. “Ah. You’re awake. Good.”  
  
Ire tried to ask where he was. “And Ahnurr said, ‘We curse you, my favoured daughter three Eyes. Keep no opinions about Truth.’ But if new-made, the labyrinth thus escapes back, and she fled to the moons left smiling.”

The mage shook his head. “Try again.”  
  
“The ending of language and place it and make a cat? I smiled with a taste of red diamonds, blue grass, and thus far my heart back from ruins would be only their cauldrons to the passageway.”  
  
“Hmmm. Not quite.”  
  
“But, pray, the Dwemer can create a ruling king quite delicious, but it is within the Chimer’s own lick-encrusted spears. There cannot be your favourite colour. The wording of Daedra. In that scholars like a chance to the wherewithal to you: the excursions of Hell. The Dwemer of such as a whole had been tenderly used.” Iriel clapped a hand over his mouth, with a terrified expression.  
  
The mage looked pensively at Iriel. “Your tongue may not be with us just yet, but perhaps we can still make progress. Can you at least understand me? Nod your head for 'yes’.” Ire managed to move his head in the proscribed direction.  
  
“Very good. Then let me fill you in on a few particulars. My name is Baladas Demnevanni, and this, Arvs Drelen is my home. I am a Wizard of House Telvanni, a private scholar, and, I can assure you, I do _not_ make a habit of taking in vagrants found on my doorstep.”  
  
He paced around the foot of Ire’s bed, frowning. “But then, most vagrants do not possess a copy of _this_.” He thrust the book he had been reading into Iriel’s face. It was ancient, and bound in something Ire didn’t immediately recognise.  
  
The mage laid the book across the bed and opened it, revealing page after page of writing in Dwemer script. “Can you read this?” Baladas demanded. Ire shook his head, and the Telvanni’s face fell. “Nchow! I had hoped…”  
  
He sighed, and turned another page, revealing a complicated diagram of… Iriel wasn’t sure, but he was interested enough to sit up fully, and examine it. “ _Chimarvamidium_ ,” he said, eventually.

 

Baladas stared at him. “Yes,” he said slowly. “That connection occurred to me, too. Who are you? Where did you get the book? You had this, as well!” He unrolled a long piece of parchment, showing a Dwemer blueprint for something that looked like the offspring of an iron cliffracer and a clockwork netch. “I think it’s some sort of flying device”, Baladas said, “but I don’t care about that. I care about translating this book! What can you tell me?”  
  
Iriel fell back onto the pillow, trying to marshal his thoughts, as Baladas waited expectantly. Finally, Ire opened his mouth. “I feel like I’ve been hit by eight hundred orgasms tied to a brick. Do you have any of the Lessons of Vivec in the house?”  
  
Baladas blinked. “I don’t believe so.”  
  
“Thank all the gods, I don’t want to see another as long as I live. All right, next question, do you have any food in the house? I’ve never been so hungry in my life, and I’ve sat through the Arch-Mage’s pre-dinner speech at the Arcane University’s Harvest’s End Banquet.”  
  
He sat up again, pulled off the blanket and swung his legs out of bed. “Mara’s arse, what do I look like?” He surveyed his ruined clothing in horror. “I really liked this shirt, you know? It had, you know… pockets, like, for… for…” He tried to stand up, and swayed wildly, clutching at the wall. “I’m sorry. I think I’m still sssomewhat under the effects of an Imperial fuckton of skooma. Have you ever taken skooma? It’s quite the experience.”  
  
Baladas glanced from Ire, to the book, and back again. “So it would seem,” he said, dryly.


	19. knowledge

Baladas had been out making “a few enquiries”. When he returned, Ire was in the kitchen, wolfing down saltrice porridge, while an ancient Dunmer woman looked on proudly.  
  
“There,” she said to the wizard as he entered. “It’s nice to have someone who appreciates my cooking, for once. You don’t see this lad leaving things to get cold on the table just because he’s lost in a book, do you?” Iriel could have told her that one meal was no basis for a comparison, but he would have had to stop eating to do that, so he didn’t.  
  
“That will be all for today, thank you, Widow Vabdas.” Baladas ushered her out of the door, as she protested mildly about the undone washing up, and Iriel finished his porridge.  
  
Once the door was closed, Baladas turned to Ire. “She will insist on cooking for me. I keep telling her it’s quite unnecessary, but ever since her husband died, she has taken it into her head that I require looking after. In truth, I am the one who must constantly steer her away from everything in this place that could do her harm.”  
  
As an afterthought, he cast a Lock spell on the door. “Follow me to my study,” he said. “I think we both have information that will interest the other.”  
  
  
“Was that a Daedroth back there?” Ire asked, trying to sound nonchalant. He knew he was vastly junior to the Telvanni, not to mention in his debt, but he also knew mage social politics, and couldn’t bring himself to sound overly impressed by anything. At least, until they reached the study, and he saw the working Centurion Sphere.  
  
“It’s adorable! What’s its name?” Ire poked it, giggling in delight as it contracted its metal limbs back into its shell.  
  
“It’s a machine. Why would it have a name?”  
  
“Whaaaat? How can you not name it? Poor little centurion, does your daddy not even care enough to–”  
  
“LET’S get down to business, shall we?” Baladas indicated a chair, and Ire tore himself away from the automaton.  
  
Ire spent the next half hour explaining who he was, where he had been, and the current state of his research into the Dwemer. In return, Baladas told him his exact point of entry into Gnisis.  
  
“The eggmine?” Iriel’s eyes bulged. “Though now that you mention it… perhaps I do recall something about eggs…”  
  
Baladas interrupted his reverie. “I do not recommend going through your wild hallucinations with a fine-tooth comb. Dreams are generally very unproductive objects of study. In any case, I have spoken to the local people of Gnisis, and I believe I have constructed a picture of what happened.”  
  
He regarded Ire over the top of his steepled fingers. “Several people confirm that you emerged from the eggmine at around noon yesterday. You ran around the village in a disorientated state, before collapsing on my doorstep, where, already alerted by the commotion, I found you. Holding the book.”  
  
“But how did I get _in_ to the eggmine? I thought you said it was heavily guarded.”  
  
“It is. And the guards all swear by the Tribunal that not one of them let you in.”  
  
“Then…”  
  
“The miners report that a screaming, semi-transparent Altmer, covered in weeds and soaking wet, broke into the eggmine from the lower levels. They were extremely upset about this, actually. I understand that several of them are seeking compensation of some kind.”  
  
“Hold on. I was wet? The book isn’t wet.”  
  
“Correct. Which means that the water must have come before the Dwemer ruin.”  
  
“ _What_ Dwemer ruin?!”  
  
Baladas smirked. “I find that egg miners are ill-equipped to handle the interrogations of a Telvanni wizard. They will either say absolutely nothing, or absolutely everything. The trick is to locate one of the second kind.”  
  
“Auri-El, what did you do to them?” Ire had heard about Telvanni methods.  
  
“Nothing invasive, I assure you. I merely asked them questions, and received answers. Answers, in this case, about the undiscovered Dwemer ruin they recently broke through into, and which they had been attempting to keep secret from me.”  
  
“And I was in this ruin?”  
  
“Apparently so! I’m most envious, but at least now I shall be able to get to it before the Mages’ Guild plunder the entire thing. Or worse, the Imperials…”  
  
Ire avoided comment about the Mages’ Guild. “So I got into the eggmine from the Dwemer ruin? How did I get into the Dwemer ruin?”  
  
“From the eggmine, apparently. According to the man assigned to guard the entrance to the Dwemer ruin, a vengeful river spirit rose howling from the watery depths of the mine, rushed past him into the ruin, then rushed out again a few minutes later, heading for the upper levels.”  
  
“Vengeful… river… spirit.”  
  
“That guard has since left his job, having had some sort of breakdown. You should probably send money to his family.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“It is known locally that an underground stream runs beneath the eggmine. It discharges into the Samsi river a short distance outside town.”  
  
“That… would explain how wet I was.”  
  
“According to an elderly fisherman who was out setting his line, at around dawn this morning, an Altmer man came running towards Gnisis down the riverbank.”  
  
“Not screaming, I hope.”  
  
“No. Making a buzzing noise, he said. It was twilight, and his eyesight isn’t so good, but he says the elf hurled himself into the river, and then picked a fight with a netch. The netch chased him around for a while, until he disappeared under the surface, and didn’t come up again.”  
  
“The fisherman didn’t do anything?”  
  
“He moved his line further upstream.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“So.” Baladas tapped the Dwemer book, and fixed his red eyes on Ire. “Surely you agree that you owe me something for my time and trouble over you, yes?”  
  
Iriel knew the score. Baladas Demnevanni was a serious Dwemer scholar, who’d probably been carrying out his research for centuries. Iriel was a university drop-out who’d only started looking into the so-called Dwarves in the last few weeks. Baladas deserved the book. He could make far better use of it than Ire ever would. And yet, something in Iriel resisted.  
  
“It’s mine,” he said. “I found it. And I never asked you to take care of me.”  
  
“You won’t give me the book? Even though you cannot even read it?”  
“Well, neither can you!”  
  
Baladas laughed. “You’re right. And please, calm yourself. As you say, the book is yours. In truth, if you had let me take it, I would have known you were not truly committed to Dwemer scholarship. And I would not be making you the following proposal: I will give you information about the location of Dwemer ruins on Vvardenfell, and in return, you will bring me any more books that you find there.”  
  
“Why would you trust that I’ll bring you the books?”  
  
“Because you will never translate them without my help.”  
  
“You’d send me, over your fellow Telvanni?” Ire was suspicious.  
  
“Exactly right. I can’t send regular hirelings; they have no idea what to look for. The only people qualified are my fellow mages, but Telvanni do not co-operate. Anything they found, they would keep for themselves. And my ruin-hopping days are behind me.”  
  
“You know I’m with the Mages’ Guild.”  
  
“And the Mages Guild are a bunch of Imperial incompetents, who could not interpret a Dwemer shopping list! You might as well give it to a guar. Are you an ambitious man, Iriel? Do you dream of someday heading up a local guildhall, instructing amateur alchemists and garden-variety enchanters in what prices to set?”  
  
“Sweet Mara, no. I just want to be left alone to read.”  
  
“You have just spoken the unofficial motto of House Telvanni. For most of us, anyway, certainly including myself. To be sure, there are political climbers among us, but traditionally, each mage seeks only solitude and freedom to continue his or her work.”  
  
 _Freedom to torture slaves_ , Iriel almost said, but Baladas was still in full flow.  
  
“Knowledge may be power,” he was declaiming, “but for some of us, it is enough that knowledge is _knowledge_. You strike me as someone who understands that.”  
  
“Wait.” Ire was lost. “You’re talking about a person you found passed out from skooma, who doesn’t even remember how he obtained the Dwemer texts…”  
  
“But you _did_ obtain them! Even in your compromised state, you instinctively knew to pick them up, out of everything you encountered in the eggmine! Imagine what you might bring back if you were sober!”  
  
“I still don’t… quite… You aren’t worried about the skooma?”  
  
Baladas shrugged. “Among Telvanni, that sort of thing barely qualifies as a quirk.” He opened a drawer, and rummaged through it. “Here is a map of all the ruins I’m aware of on Vvardenfell. I say again: if you truly care about knowledge, you will bring your findings to me. Now.” He stood up, and began to concentrate a sphere of magicka between his hands. “Where should I send you?”  
  
Ire collected his texts, his mind almost too full to think. “Um… Ald'ruhn, please. The Mages’ Guild, for preference, but as long as you don’t teleport me inside a wall, I’ll be happy.” Seconds later, he vanished in a shower of lurid magenta sparks.


	20. again

Twenty-four hours later. The main hall of Ald'ruhn Mages Guild.  
  
Iriel stood before Edwinna Elbert for what was ostensibly a private meeting, though he knew from the deafening silence around them that every single mage in the guild was listening intently nearby.  
  
“I want you to know,” Edwinna was saying, “that this is not about the Dwemer tube. It’s disappointing, of course, but it was your first expedition. I assure you, your failure has had no bearing on my decision.”

 _It’s happening again._  
  
He held himself completely immobile.  
  
“Whilst you were gone, some disturbing information came to light. When I agreed to mentor you, I was unaware of the crimes for which you were convicted in Cyrodiil. I’m sure you understand why the theft of magical artifacts is not something I can simply ignore.”  
  
 _Three times. That’s three times, now. At least it wasn’t over a boy, this time. …What am I saying? Why couldn’t it at least have been over a boy?_  
  
He didn’t move a muscle. He displayed absolutely no outward reaction to Edwinna’s words.  
  
“In addition, there is the matter of your drug abuse. Moon sugar and skooma are both prohibited substances, and I cannot be seen to tolerate their presence in my guildhall.”  
  
He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of showing any emotion.  
  
“I take no pleasure in this, but I must inform you that as of this moment, you are expelled from the Vvardenfell Mages’ Guild. You have the rest of the day to collect your things and go.”  
  
Ire stopped recasting the Paralyze spell on himself behind his back, and walked away without saying a word.  
  
He had fully expected to burst into tears as soon as he was alone, possibly sooner, but instead, he found himself gripped by a cold fury.  
  
It was the sheer hypocrisy of it that galled him. Whatever Edwinna said, he knew that if he had given her what she wanted, his transgressions would have been overlooked. Even now, he knew that if he went back downstairs and offered her the ancient Dwemer text, or even just the airship plans, she would be scrambling to reinstate him.  
  
He wouldn’t do it. Baladas was right: they were petty, small-minded fools, and he had been wasting his time. He only wished he had somewhere else to go.  
  
In the room that was no longer his, he threw the contents of the chest into a sack: his alchemy equipment, a few clothes. Not much more than he had arrived with, in truth. His sugar stash - running very low. That decided his next destination, at least.  
  
He surveyed his desk. He’d have to leave most of the books behind, if he wanted to be able to move. With no fixed address, he could hardly rely on Feather spells. He swept up his notes, selected the most relevant Dwemer studies to go into the bag and headed for the door. At the last minute, he stopped, turned back, and retrieved Vivec’s Sermon 14 from under the bed.  
  
“I’m sorry, Iriel.” Erranil shook her head, primly. “I’m no longer authorised to transport you. You’ll have to take the silt strider.”  
  
Hurtling up the stairs, he bumped into Anarenen. “Iriel, I’m–”  
  
“Get out of my way!!” Iriel shoved past him, and was out of the door before Anarenen could say anything else.


	21. refinement

“Hold the fucking retort steady, you’re going to destabilise the solution!” Iriel grabbed the vessel out of Tsiya’s unsafe claws.  
  
“Tsiya was just looking at it!” the Khajiit muttered, with a sulky flick of her ears.  
  
“You don’t even know what you’re looking for!” Ire snapped. “If you agitate it too much before the precipitate forms, we’ll have to throw it all away. Again.”  
  
“Precipitrate?”  
  
“When it goes cloudy.”  
  
They stared at the retort, willing it to cloud. After a minute, Tsiya said, “Does Iriel really think this will work?”  
  
Iriel adjusted the temperature of his calcinator before replying. “It should. If what you told me about the refinement process is correct, it can be done with standard alchemical equipment. It’s simply a matter of finding the correct heat level and ratio of parts to the solution.”

“Tsiya only thinks that Iriel has wasted a lot of sugar already.”  
  
Ire rounded on her in frustration. “Yes, and who traipsed all over the fucking Bitter Coast to collect it from the smugglers for you?”  
  
“It is not Tsiya’s fault she is wanted by guards and cannot leave the house!”  
  
“Perhaps, but it _is_ her fault she got kicked out of the Thieves’ Guild, so she can’t pay them to clear her bounty.”  
  
They watched the retort. Eventually, Ire sighed. “Shit. It should have clouded by now. This batch is another failure. Why in Oblivion did you have to go and shake it up?”  
  
“Tsiya barely touched it! Tsiya thinks maybe Iriel is just bad alchemist, and is blaming Tsiya!”  
  
“Tsiya doesn’t know what she’s fucking talking about!”  
  
It was difficult not to fall into Khajiiti speech patterns, after the amount of time Ire had been forced to spend shut up in Tsiya’s tiny house with her. They both benefited from the living arrangement, but had disliked each other from the start, and things hadn’t improved with greater familiarity. In fact, while they had not quite managed to refine moon sugar into skooma yet, they _had_ succeeded in concentrating their mutual dislike into a pure and virulent hatred.  
  
Still, no matter how many insults they hurled at each other during the day, they always had the drug to bond over every night before they passed out. Tsiya had obtained a new skooma connection, but it was proving unreliable, not to mention expensive. Thus their efforts at attaining alchemical independence.  
  
Tsiya fidgeted in the background as Ire washed out his apparatus. “Tsiya supposes that Iriel will go over to South Wall again this evening.”  
  
“Probably.”  
  
“So nice for him. To go out, to meet friends.”  
  
“It’s your own fault they don’t speak to you. And no, I won’t talk to Habasi again. It won’t work, and mentioning your name makes her tail start thrashing.”  
  
“But if Iriel could just tell her–”  
  
“No! I need her in a good mood, because she hinted last night that she might have another job for me, and I want to make sure she follows through on it. You should want that, too. It’s in Hla Oad, so if I’m lucky, I can score enough sugar to replace what we wasted tonight.”  
  
“What _Iriel_ wasted” muttered Tsiya, as she retreated to her hammock with what remained of the moon sugar.


	22. fragile

_A Dwemer tube. Of course it would be a fucking Dwemer tube._  
  
He’d probably look back on this and laugh, Iriel told himself, as he slid the stolen artifact out of his shirtsleeve and into his pack, but right now, that wound was still a little raw. Anyway, Edwinna wouldn’t be getting this tube. It was for Habasi, and the Guild, once he returned to Balmora. Hopefully before nightfall, he thought, glancing around Hla Oad, a tiny village of mud-covered shacks, each teetering on the verge of sinking completely into the swamp.

He had one more item on his agenda before leaving. Tsiya had given him details of the Camonna Tong sugar smugglers working out of Hla Oad, and he planned to pay them a visit. Ideally, the kind of visit where he partook of their hospitality without them ever knowing he was there. A careful search of the docks turned up a few bags loaded into a dinghy, but Ire was sure there was more. According to Tsiya, the smugglers were based in the caves along the shore. As he approached, carefully invisible, he heard male Dunmer voices just inside the cave mouth.

“Useless s'wit! How am I supposed to get the blighted slave to Balmora then? I swear, if you fail me one more time, I’ll gut you like a–”  
  
“Sorry, muthsera! Gotta go!” A gangly Dunmer teenager sprinted out of the cave, ricocheting off Iriel before vanishing into the swamp. Knocked into visibility, Ire had no time to recast the spell before an older Dunmer followed, muttering obscenities under his breath.

“Hey, n'wah. You’re not from around here.” Ire braced for impact, but the man’s tone switched to something almost ingratiating. “You’re not heading to Balmora, are you? Want to make a little cash?”  
  
Iriel considered. “Does this job pay in moon sugar, by any chance?”  
  
The man’s face developed a nasty grin. “Oh yes. Depend upon it.”  
  
  
The Khajiiti slave was tiny and poorly clothed, but she did her determined best to keep up with Iriel’s long legs as he led her along the marshy road to Balmora. Occasionally, he had to stop to untangle her from a vine, or, on one occasion, lift her bodily out of the mud she was sinking into. She barely weighed anything, and her fur felt thin and greasy over her bony ribs. She never complained - indeed, she spoke only to confirm her name: Rabinna.  
  
He’d been instructed to take her to someone named Vorar Helas in Balmora, who would pay him on delivery. Rabinna appeared to have no objection, or at least, she made no attempt to run away. It was unusual for Ire to meet someone even less capable of small-talk than he was, but he found it a relief that she seemed to prefer silence.  
  
 _Perhaps you should try to, you know, free her or something?  
  
Where would she go, though? She’d never survive on her own. She’s probably better off with her new owner or whatever. Probably best not to get involved, just take the sugar and get home before that shitstain Tsiya finishes all the skooma._   
  
These apathetic, self-absorbed thoughts came to haunt Iriel for a long time afterwards.  
  
Vorar Helas lived east of the river, so they had to cross a bridge. Hearing her stumble, Ire turned just in time to catch Rabinna as she almost fell into the water. Touching her, he found she was trembling uncontrollably. “It’s all right,” he said, in what he hoped were encouraging tones. “We’re almost there.”  
  
She stared at him in wordless desperation and terror, but followed him to the other side.  
  
The Dunmer answered Ire’s knock, and ushered them inside with a smile. “I see you’ve delivered my shipment. You have my thanks, outlander.”  
  
Ire hunched near the door, hands in his pockets. “I was told you’d pay me in moon sugar,” he said. “Ten units.” _ugh this place smells like something fucking died in here, i hope sottilde’s on bar tonight she’s not going to believe the shit i have to put up with…_  
  
“No problem. Just let me get it out for you.” Helas drew a dagger from his belt, and advanced on Rabinna, who had closed her eyes, and started mouthing words Iriel couldn’t hear.  
  
 _…really think i was on the verge of a breakthrough with that last batch, if i could just stabilise it properly, perhaps if i increase the sugar concentration by ten percent…  
  
_ Helas stabbed her in the stomach–  
 _  
…and reduced the heat by…_  
  
–once, twice, three times–  
  
 _…by…_  
  
Pure horror flooded into him, but then the adrenaline hit. He hurled a Paralyze spell at Helas, who, taken by surprise, had no chance to resist. By the time it wore off, Iriel had cast enough frost spells to drop him lifeless to the floor. Next to Rabinna.  
  
 _Oh shit. Oh shitoshitoshitoshit what have I done, I’ve murdered her, I’ve–_  
  
She made a faint gasp, and Ire dropped to his knees. In blind panic, he began casting healing spells, anything his meagre skill in Restoration could drag from his fingers. Only one in five succeeded, but he kept going anyway, forcing vitality into her frail body in weak, irregular jolts. Wrenching her soul back from the brink, inch by agonising inch, as she whimpered and twitched. He knew he did it far more for himself than for her, and it felt almost as violent an act as the stabbing she had already suffered. 

_pleasepleaseplease Auri-ElMagnusStendarrMaraanyoneplease iknowidon'treallyworshipyoubutpleasejustplease_

She was breathing, barely. The ugly wounds across her belly had stopped bleeding, but he was still far from sure she would live. Her shirt had been torn away, and he could see her heart fluttering erratically against her ribcage.  
  
“Khenarthi… Khenarthi…” He leaned to catch her whispered words, cradling her head in his lap. “Rabinna… feels your holy breath, Khenarthi. Lift her… lift Rabinna, and fly her to the Sands Behind the Stars…”  
  
“No,” Ire pleaded with her. “No, not yet. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He repeated it over and over, each time less sure which action he was apologising for most.

 


	23. fix

“Rabinna?” Iriel gently shook her awake. “We’re here. This is Ebonheart.”  
  
The little Khajiit opened her eyes, and came awake almost instantly. It had been a long journey, via silt strider, then boat, and he’d had to carry her for the parts in between.  
  
She stood up carefully, as Ire stood ready to support her. “Rabinna can walk now, thank you, no need for help.”  
  
“You said that last time. Do you have any idea where this Argonian Mission is?”  
  
She shook her head. “Rabinna only knows that they help slaves get back to Elsweyr.”  
  
“Don’t worry, it’s fine. I’ll ask somebody.” _Come on, Ire. Nothing like having someone even worse at it than you to force you to get over your horror of talking to strangers._

At the Argonian Mission, he stood there feeling like a fraud, as Rabinna haltingly told the Argonian ambassador how she had been forced to swallow packages of smuggled moon sugar, but Iriel had saved her life, and carried her to freedom. Unable to stand it, he sincerely wished her well, and fumbled his way out of the door, away from all those kind, earnest faces, thanking him deeply, not understanding what an utter waste of flesh he was.  
  
He wandered around the unfamiliar port town, all tall Imperial stone buildings, and well-dressed merchants, bustling through the streets. Somewhere quiet where he could do a little sugar would be welcome, to tide him over until he was back in the loving arms of Tsiya’s skooma. All the places he walked through seemed too well-heeled for that, though. The guards would be on him in seconds. Then he saw a sign: Imperial Cult Chapels.  
  
 _Well. That would be… amusing. And they might have quiet prayer alcoves where I could stare at something pretty, like stained glass windows or something._  
  
There wasn’t much in the way of stained glass windows in the chapels, but as it turned out, there _was_ something pretty.  
  
“Welcome,” said the Redguard man, snaring Iriel in an aura of warmth and confidence that exploded from him like a glyph-trap, as Ire tried to slip surreptitiously by. “My name is Kaye, and I’m the head shrine sergeant here. Can I tell you anything about the Imperial Cult? About our services?”  
  
Kaye was one of those people who insist on making direct eye contact with everyone they talk to, and Ire found himself pinned like a butterfly by large, dark eyes. _oh no._  
  
“Um… I’m not here for services, I was just…” _for gods’ sake don’t tell him why you really came in here,_ _now concentrate, he’s still talking.  
_  
“…if you can donate more time and effort, would you like to become a lay servant? Lay servants are those of us who serve the Nine without taking religious orders, instead demonstrating our faith by carrying out various mundane tasks for the Cult. Unglamorous, perhaps, but spiritually rewarding.” He smiled. _oh no._  
  
“For example, I supervise the shrine sergeants. A shrine sergeant helps keep order at the shrines, carries messages and packages, and sometimes escorts priests and lay servants on dangerous missions.”  
  
“Um… possibly… I mean, I’m not actually a member, so…”  
  
“Well, would you like me to fix that for you?”  
  
 _oh gods, fix me, fix everything, fix me hard_ “…yes.”  
  
“Wonderful! Let’s get you all signed up.” Kaye guided Ire over to a table, where various pieces of paper received his unresisting signature. When he was finished, Kaye clasped his hand and shook it with another heartstopping smile.   
  
“Congratulations. You are now a Layman in the Imperial Cult. Welcome, Iriel, to our community, and may your rejoice in its blessings.” _oh, I am._  
  
Kaye’s skin was warm, and he had the safest hands Ire had felt in a long time. _stupid imperial hand shaking thing, i take back everything bad i ever said about you._  
  
Eventually, Kaye gently disengaged himself, and began speaking in more solemn tones. “If you’re willing, Iriel, I have your first shrine sergeant assignment. Are you ready to serve the Nine?”  
  
Ire nodded, not quite willing to risk speech. Kaye seemed satisfied. “Good. I could use a little help here. We treated a High Elf named Caryarel for swamp fever, but we later discovered that while he was here, a rare Chapel Limeware Bowl disappeared from our shrine. Will you find this Caryarel and retrieve our bowl for us? The High Elves are a small, tight-knit community on Vvardenfell. Perhaps you might know him, or know someone who does?”  
  
 _Oh. Is that the only reason he talked to me? Because I’m an Altmer, and another Altmer stole from him?_  
  
As Ire tried to hide his mingled disappointment and secondhand racial embarrassment, Kaye sensed his discomfort, and impaled him with a gaze of sorrowful regret. “I’m truly sorry. I don’t mean to imply anything personal. This is simply the next assignment I have available. Will you help?”  
  
“Y… yes. Of course. Anything.” _ugh, why did you say “anything” like that, it made you sound desperate, idiot, idiot._  
  
Outside the chapel, Ire tried to breathe deeply, and regain control of his faculties, but chameleon spells were no help to him here.  
  
 _Well. That’s all my midnight fantasies populated for the year, then._  
  
 _SHIT my shirt still has Rabinna’s blood all over it, what must he have thought? The shirt was brownish red to start with, but surely he could see it or worse smell it, oh gods._  
  
 _Why do I have to meet incredible people when I’m such a fucking wreck, when I’ve done nothing but screw everything up, when there is literally no possibility that I could ever be worthy of them? Even if he were remotely interested, which he’s not._  
  
With a disgusted sigh, Iriel headed for the docks to find the sort of ship captain who didn’t mind his passengers taking moon sugar and lying face-down on the deck.

 


	24. lies

“Fool!” Tsiya hissed. “Vorar Helas was Tsiya’s connection! With that one dead, there will be even less sugar coming into Balmora! What was Iriel thinking?”  
  
“So I should’ve let her die? How can you say that?”  
  
Tsiya’s tail was lashing so hard she knocked a bowl off the shelf behind her. “Because Tsiya cannot care for all the thousands of slaves in Vvardenfell! Slaves die every day! Tsiya has enough to do caring for Tsiya, and making sure SHE doesn’t die, because nobody else will!”  
  
“You’re horrible,” said Iriel. “You’re a horrible person. _That’s_ why nobody else gives a shit about Tsiya.”

She narrowed her eyes, ears flat against her head. “Irrriel has _no_ idea what Tsiya’s life has been like. What she’s been through. But Iriel is so sure he’s superior to Tsiya, even though he’s the one leeching off her hospitality, wasting her sugar, using up her skooma, telling lies about her to Habasi.”  
  
“Lies? I told her the truth! That you’re a spiteful, paranoid pusbucket, and she’d be better off letting a incontinent scamp into the Guild before taking you back!”  
  
He was too angry to tell how much of his own self-hatred was bleeding into his hatred of Tsiya. His inability to tell the difference only drove him deeper into fury.  
  
“GET OUT.” Tsiya’s claws twitched convulsively, and there were tears in her eyes. “GET OUT OF TSIYA’S HOUSE. NOW.”  
  
“With pleasure!” Iriel began grabbing his things. “But not without my share of the skooma.”  
  
“There _is_ no more skooma! Irrriel should give Tsiya the skooma _he_ found in Hla Oad!”  
  
“What skooma? I didn’t find anything! Your information was as full of shit as you are.” He didn’t turn to meet her eye.

As Iriel finished packing, he noticed Tsiya seemed always to be standing in front of a particular spot on the shelving rack. A suspicion formed, and he shoved her aside, pulling out the jars and bottles as she hissed and clawed at him. Sure enough, three bottles of skooma were hidden inside one of the storage jars at the back, and he hesitated for less than a millisecond before putting all of them into his bag.  
  
Holding it high out of her reach, he forced his way through the door, although her outraged shrieking and yowling followed him all the way across the river.  
  
  
  
Sottilde was taking a turn behind the South Wall’s bar when Ire came down the stairs. She tutted at his story, and poured him a glass of shein without asking.  
  
“This kinda stuff always happens when someone gets themselves tangled up with Tsiya,” she said. “It was only a matter of time.“ She looked him up and down. "Shor’s balls! Your shirt looks like something with a whole lotta teeth ate it, an’ threw it back up.”  
  
“Ah… yes. That would be Tsiya’s claws, and then before that there was the boat, the silt strider, the blood, the swamp… Mara’s arse, when did I last change clothes? At least I have all my things with me.”

Sottilde watched, grinning, as he pulled his shirt off and started rummaging through his bag for another. “That’s just rude an’ uncalled for,” she said, “taunting me with that view when you’re off-limits to the ladies.”  
  
 A derisive snort came from inside Ire’s shirt, as he pulled it on. “View?! What view? You couldn’t find a muscle on me with a bright light and a magnifying lens.”  
  
“Oh, I _like_ skinny, me. This one time, I saw a picture of a really hot guy on the town news-board, but when I got closer to see if I could get his name, it was a can-you-identify-this-corpse drawing of some poor sap they’d found dead of starvation in a cave-in.”  
  
Ire almost choked on his wine. “You’re terrible! What kind of Nord are you? Is that why you’re not in Skyrim any more, they threw you out for disrespecting brawn?”  
  
“Yeah, that, and the whole stealing military secrets, traitor to my homeland thing.”  
  
“Fuck homelands!” he said, emphatically, raising his glass.  
  
“I’ll drink to that!” she replied.  
  
“Traitor to muscles, though, Tilde?” He shook his head mournfully. “How do you sleep?”  
  
She smirked. “Who says I wanna sleep? Why’d you think I came here?” She leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Seen any… _elves_?”  
  
He groaned in mock-disgust. “Well, if you’re going to put it that way, I’ve had far too _much_ sleep, lately.”  
  
She topped up his glass. “Speaking of sleep, where are you gonna stay now? I mean, you can crash here with me tonight if you want, but you know how Bacola feels about drugs on the premises. He worries we’ll get raided. He catches you up to anything, and we’ll both be out on our ears.”

“I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”  
  
“Good. Me neither.” She paused, tapping her fingernails on the bar. “You really oughtta quit, you know.”  
  
A sigh. “I know.”  
  
“I don’t wanna lecture you. I know it’s not an easy thing, and it’s gotta be your choice, but…”  
  
“I know. Thanks.”  
  
“If there’s anything I can do to help…”  
  
“Right now, you can help most by finding me a new dealer. Do you know anyone else in Balmora who has any?”  
  
She sighed, and leaned her head on her hand, looking at him sideways. “Why would I know something like that?”  
  
“Because you know eeeeverything.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “I shouldn’t enable you.”  
  
“Would it help if I took my shirt off again?”  
  
“Whore.”  
  
“Please don’t insult whores by comparing them to me. It’s a skilled profession, and I’m merely an enthusiastic amateur.”  
  
She laughed, despite herself. “OK, you win. There’s a friend of Bacola’s who comes in sometimes. I dunno much about him, but he’s a sugartooth. No clue where he gets his supply from, but he never seems to run out. In return for his name and address, though, you gotta tell me more about this Kaye guy.”  
  
“Deal.”


	25. expecting

Iriel staggered up the hill under the weight of his bag, squinting at the run-down houses of Labour Street, windows either dark and vacant, or draped with filthy cloth. Finally, he came to the place Sottilde had described, a tiny one-room hovel, clinging to the end of the row. Courage boosted by the alcohol in his bloodstream, he banged on the door.  
  
Obtaining only a long silence, he knocked again, this time producing a groan, and a muffled crash. Eventually, an Imperial man appeared in the doorway. The scraps of his remaining hair were white, indicating he was at the far end of middle age, but he was in remarkably good physical shape, for all that. Ire could tell, because the only thing he was wearing was a pair of sagging pyjama pants.  
  
“Are you Caius Cosades?” asked Ire politely. “My name is Iriel of Lillandril, and I was told to speak to you.”  
  
The man blinked heavily, and rubbed at his eyes. “What? Yes. I’m Caius Cosades. But, what do you mean, you were told to speak to me? What are you talking about?”  
  
Ire threw a quick glance over his shoulder. “It’s a rather sensitive matter,” he whispered. “Would it be all right if I came inside?”

The tiny bedsit was a mess of books, plates and bottles, with the unmistakeable scent of moon sugar overriding everything. As soon as the door closed, Cosades’ face lost its sleepiness, his movements becoming focused and precise. He stared at Iriel with intense, ice-blue eyes, before opening a drawer and reading something off a sheaf of papers inside. “Did you say Iriel of Lillandril?”  
  
Ire had the feeling he imagined rats must have, just as the trap springs closed. “Yes?” he squeaked.  
  
Cosades banged the drawer shut, and glared at him. “Where in Oblivion have you been? I was expecting you _three months_ _ago!_ ”

Ire looked for the door. “Don’t even think about it,” barked Cosades. “It’s locked, and you’re not going anywhere. Do you have my documents?”  
  
“Doc…u…ments?”  
  
“According to this, you were issued with a package of coded documents. Do you have them?”  
  
Ire blinked, as stress glued his thoughts together. “I… the… coded…” He opened his bag and somehow located them, still buried amid the Dwemer notes he hadn’t added to in weeks.  
  
Cosades snatched them from his hand. “You already broke the seal, I see. Not that you’ll have gotten anything out of them, but it doesn’t say much for your integrity.” He continued reading. “Hmm. Very interesting. So. It says here the Emperor wants me to make you a Novice in the Blades. And that means you’ll be following my orde– would you stop casting that damn chameleon spell? The flickering is very distracting.”  
  
He read another page, nodding slowly. “Ah. Your speciality is illusion magic. I can see why they thought you might be suited to this kind of work.” His piercing gaze flicked up to Iriel. “You do understand who the Blades are, don’t you? We’re spies. We’re the Emperor’s hidden eyes and ears in the provinces. We watch the Emperor’s enemies. We look for opportunities. We make reports. And, when the Emperor commands, we obey. Right now, however, you are under my command, and will follow my orders. Are you ready to follow my orders, Iriel?”  
  
It wasn’t the sort of question you could really say “no” to.  
  
Ire said it anyway, and teleported out.  
  
  
He emerged from the shower of Almsivi Intervention sparks and went straight into a dead sprint. He hurtled through Balmora from the Temple to the silt strider, and threw himself into the passenger hollow. “Drive!! Drive!!!” he yelled to the surprised caravan operator.  
  
“Drive where, muthsera?” the Dunmer asked, mildly.  
  
“Anywhere! Just go!”  
  
The caravaner’s brow creased. “Striders don’t work that way, muthsera. You got to be very precise with what you tell them to do, else you might damage their tendons, see, or worse, they might get disoriented, and start to skrell. You don’t want to be inside the carapace when they do _that_ , sera, believe me.”  
  
“All right! Fine!” Iriel pressed himself out of sight beneath the rim of the strider’s shell. “Ald'ruhn, then. As fast as… as entomologically possible.”  
  
“Right you are, muthsera.” The Dunmer made a clicking noise in the back of his throat and the strider lurched away from the stand.  
_  
__A spy. Ahahahahaha haaha ahaha hahaa oh gods._ _Master of deception, that’s me!_  
  
He slid to the softly yielding floor of the strider, giggling hysterically, and didn’t really stop until he reached Ald'ruhn.


	26. ashes

Iriel was back in the Ald'ruhn Mages’ Guild, albeit in an unofficial capacity. So unofficial was his capacity, in fact, that he was there to rob the place. The local Thieves Guild boss, Aengoth the Jeweler, had been suspicious of his defection, and decided to have him prove his loyalty. At least, that was Ire’s theory for why he’d been assigned the job.  
  
He hadn’t seen the guildhall this quiet since his expulsion. To be fair, he hadn’t seen the guildhall since his expulsion. According to Aengoth’s insider tip-off, all the mages were over in Vivec, forced to listen to Trebonius give a speech of some kind. _See, getting kicked out’s not so bad after all!_  
  
One apprentice remained, yawning over a pile of ancient textbooks. Iriel slipped past without disturbing a dusty page.

He knew where the target was kept, because Anarenen had unlocked the chest, once, to show him. It was a shortsword, plain steel, but with a Daedric enchantment. A family heirloom of his mother’s, he’d told Iriel. Anarenen showing no signs of martial prowess, it had initially been passed down to his younger brother, a witchhunter. When he was killed in battle with Daedra, the blade had been sent to Anarenen. Perhaps someday he would pass it to his children, if he ever found the time to marry. Although, he’d sighed, indicating his pile of potion orders, this was most unlikely.  
  
Iriel liked Anarenen, but was choosing to detach that emotion from his current actions. He would feel terrible later, no doubt, but this was to be expected. Almost everything he did fed directly into the Pit, lately, he’d had no choice but to numb himself. Compassion was a luxury he couldn’t afford.  
  
_I burned my bridges with the Mages’ Guild already, so why not piss on the ashes?_ _Perhaps I should leave a note saying I stole it, to save him from feeling bad about my expulsion and worrying about me._  
  
Breaking into Edwinna’s office and stealing her Dwemer research, by contrast, caused him no pangs of guilt whatsoever.  
  
  
Back at the Rat in the Pot tavern, Aengoth took the sword, but returned Iriel a suspicious look. “Do you have trouble I don’t know about?” he demanded.  
  
“I have no idea what you mean,” said Ire. _It’s true, I don’t. I have a wide variety of troubles and it’s quite unreasonable to expect me to distinguish them at a moment’s notice.  
_  
“Someone was in here, sniffing around, asking about you,” said the Bosmer. “Gildan, from in town. I don’t know her full deal, but there’s a whisper she’s got powerful Imperial friends. If you’ve got that kind of people after you, it’s going to mean trouble for us. And I have enough trouble.”  
  
Iriel’s attempt at cool indifference collapsed. “You didn’t _say_ anything to her, did you?”  
  
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t have the damn nerve to ask me that, Blackcap.”  
  
“Sorry. …Boss.”  
  
“Forget it. But listen, you better deal with your own bad business, and not go dragging us into it, you hear me?”  
  
“Yes, boss.”  
  
“Good, because I have another job for you. A customer wants a Redoran Master Helm. I hear there’s one in Arobar Manor. So get out of here and fetch it.”  
  
  
In the street outside, a young, elegantly dressed Imperial woman with perfectly arranged dark curls called out to him. “Excuse me! I require an escort to Ghostgate! I’ll pay you!”  
  
He shook his head, and averted his eyes, but she ran after him. “Well, do you know anyone? I have been here for _two days_ , and I cannot find a _single_ person willing to take me! This is completely and utterly unacceptable!”  
  
Iriel, already in a dark mood, laughed in her face. “What do you expect? Everyone knows Ghostgate is a bleak hellhole in the middle of nowhere, and only the very brave, or very stupid go there. Which are you?”  
  
She bristled with indignation. “I am a pilgrim! Ghostgate is a sacred shrine to Almsivi!”  
  
“Very stupid, then. Well, you can make your own choices, but don’t expect the rest of us to put ourselves in danger pandering to your ridiculous notions of piety.” He brushed her aside and headed for the manor district.  
  
Which turned out to be a terrible idea on all counts.


	27. hindsight

Iriel had never seen a Redoran Master Helm before, but if he had, he would have brought a stronger bag. One that didn’t split when sharp bonemold ridges rubbed against it, sending the helm crashing to the floor and alerting all the guards in the room.  
  
Hindsight would also inform Iriel that while travelling light was very convenient, especially for theft, relying solely on spells, rather than potions or scrolls, had its drawbacks. For example, it meant that if you suddenly found yourself with your hands full, perhaps, say, with a bulky, spiky helm, casting Recall, Intervention or any kind of invisibility spell becomes virtually impossible.

  
  
(“Why didn’t you drop the helm, escape and try again another time?” she would ask him, a few hours later, as they scrambled across yet another ash dune.  
  
“I don’t think clearly under pressure,” he would mutter. “That’s why I’m stuck with you.”)  
  
  
  
Other things that Iriel was rapidly discovering against his will:  
  
\- Falling off the high walkways inside the Skar onto the hard ridges of the crabshell floor is extremely painful. Especially when you land awkwardly on your ankle, the spiky helm in your arms lacerates your face and you are, as previously mentioned, unable to cast spells.  
  
\- Redoran guards can run quite fast, especially when chasing hobbled, incompetent thieves.  
  
\- Ash is treacherous underfoot, and can cause you to skid, as you attempt a sharp turn around the rocks at the Ald'ruhn city border, and subsequently crash head-first into someone’s expensive silk skirts.  
  
  
  
(“Why didn’t you put on the helm?” she would say, even more hours later. “Then you’d have had your hands free to cast.”  
  
Silence, except for the dull roar of the ash-storm.  
  
“Didn’t you hear me? I asked why you–”  
  
“I heard you! And I agreed to escort you, not make fucking conversation!”  
  
“There’s no need to swear.”  
  
A pause, to navigate some trama root blocking the path.  
  
“So, you never thought to wear it, then.”  
  
“If you’re so fucking interested in my fucking thoughts, do you want to know what I’m thinking right now? I’ll give you a clue, it involves you and those ten-inch thorns.”  
  
“You really are _unbelievably_ rude.”)  
  
  
  
“And just _what_ do you think you’re doing?” The woman’s voice had such an air of natural authority that the Redoran guards actually let go of Iriel, who fell into the dirt again. Then they recovered themselves.  
  
“He’s a criminal, muthsera. He stole a valuable helm from Councilor Arobar of House Redoran.”  
  
The Imperial woman smiled sweetly. “I’m afraid you must be mistaken. I am a pilgrim, and this man is my guide to the Shrine of Pride.”  
  
“Look, lady, I saw him inside the manor, he _definitely_ –”  
  
“You’re quite mistaken, I assure you. Look at him. Is he holding a Redoran helm?”  
  
The guard dragged Iriel to his feet and shook him around a little. “No.”  
  
_What?_ Iriel was more shocked than anyone. _Where in Oblivion is it? I had it a moment ago!_  
  
“He must’ve stashed it somewhere as he ran,” the guard was saying, “but it was him! Do you take me for a fool?”  
  
The woman smiled coldly. “I don’t need to take you for anything. Do you know who I am?”  
  
The guard’s face was impassive. This was because he was wearing a full-face helm, but it was actually pretty impassive underneath, too. “No. Should I?”  
  
“I am Viatrix Coriolana Petilia, daughter of Marsus Brumius Petilius, Vice-Branch-Chairman of the East Empire Company. My father is currently presiding over the negotiations between the Empire and House Redoran regarding the Sudanit ebony mine. And he would be _extremely_ upset to hear that Redoran guardsmen have been harassing his only daughter. It could even prejudice his judgement in favour of trading with House Hlaalu instead.”

The guards shifted uneasily. “I dunno about this,” one muttered to the other. “but I do know the Council have been talking about that damn ebony mine deal for months. I’m not going to be the one who screwed it up.”  
  
The other guard shrugged. “The Altmer fetcher doesn’t have the helm, so it’s her word against ours. Maybe you’re right.”  
  
Viatrix smiled. “Most sensible of you. You had better get moving. I expect the real thief is halfway to Maar Gan by now.” Her voice radiated command. “Go away.” They did.  
  
When he was sure they had really left, Iriel began brushing himself down. Then he saw Viatrix’s triumphant face. “Stop that,” he said. “You can’t force me to be your guide to Ghostgate.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows. “Of course I can,” she said. “Unless you do exactly what I tell you, I’ll change my mind, and tell the guards you’re the thief.”  
  
“What?” Ire was incredulous. “You weren’t in the manor! You can’t prove anything!”  
  
“Are you quite sure about that?” she said, lifting her skirts to reveal the Redoran helm hidden underneath.


	28. faith

The worst thing, thought Iriel, was that he couldn’t even manage to hate her. Viatrix Petilia was proud, arrogant, demanding and in many ways completely insufferable. She had effectively enslaved him as her escort, threatening to expose his crimes to the Ald'ruhn militia if he refused. She constantly asked questions: how soon they would arrive? was he sure he knew where he was going? (not remotely, but the huge glowing Ghostfence was difficult to lose track of) wouldn’t it have been more effective to kill that cliff racer with fire instead of frost?

And yet he found himself, to his intense irritation, feeling a certain kinship. It emerged when he finally persuaded her to take a break from the ash-winds and rest in the shadow of some rocks for a while. She seemed to be able to walk forever, but he was getting badly out of breath.

She opened her knapsack and passed him a wrapped package. “Here. You need to keep your strength up, if we’re to get there by tonight.”  
  
He opened it - a baked ash yam stuffed with herbs and something white and crumbly. “Thanks. Aren’t you going to eat anything?”  
  
She shook her head. “Not until the sun finishes going down. I’ve chosen to fast during the hours of dawn and dusk. I should be meditating now, really.”  
  
“Your loss.” He scooped a fingerful of scarlet yam-flesh into his mouth. “It probably helps that my diet has been appalling lately, but this tastes incredible.”  
  
“Does it?” She looked pained. “I intended for it to be plain and simple food, suitable for a pilgrimage.”  
  
Ire laughed. “The last time someone gave me pilgrim food, it was a lump of dry bread. This is luxuriously decadent in comparison!”  
  
To his horror and astonishment, she started to cry. For a while, life was unbearably awkward for both of them, but eventually, she found her handkerchief and regained a little control. Ire studiously avoided eye contact, eating his ash yam.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what the matter is?” she asked, sounding more surprised than offended.  
  
Ire looked uncomfortable. “I assumed you’d rather I didn’t. Perhaps you had a distressing experience with a bread product as a child, and I didn’t want to dredge up traumatic memories. Perhaps a bully stole your sweetroll, or your mother choked to death on a baguette, or–”  
  
“Do stop talking.” She blew her nose again. “I was crying because the food is yet another sign that I’m nothing but a spoiled rich Imperial girl who can’t possibly understand the spiritual heart of pilgrimage. Who has no right to think she can dedicate her life to Almsivi. I try so hard to get everything right, even though I know that if I were truly called by the saints to follow this path, I wouldn’t need to try, because it would come naturally. I try so hard - and it’s still all wrong! And we’re probably lost, and won’t make it to the shrine by tomorrow, and I’ll miss my chance to meditate there on the holy day, and then _that_ will be wrong, too.”

Iriel was out of his depth. “All these details… are they really that important?”  
  
“Yes! Because getting them right is a demonstration of faith!”  
  
“If you ask me, I think doing it imperfectly when it’s difficult shows a lot more faith than doing it perfectly when it comes naturally.”  
  
“Do you really think so?” She looked down at her pale hands, neatly clasped on her lap. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I lied to those guards, back in Ald'ruhn. My father wouldn’t care if they harassed me. In fact, he’d be pleased. He’d hope it would scare me into going back home to Ebonheart. He laughed at me, when I said I wanted to join the Temple. He said it was a silly fad, and I’d grow out of it. He said I should remember my duty to my family, and decide which of his horrible sycophants he should betroth me to.”

Iriel winced. “Did he have a particular expression, as if he were confused and disgusted by your choices, but perhaps if he squinted hard enough, he might still be able to see the sweet, obedient child you used to be? Except it’s not working, it’s just pulling his face in opposite directions in a really unpleasant way?”  
  
She looked at him, oddly. “Not a bad description. It’s familiar to you, I take it?”  
  
He shrugged. “My ma used to make that face when she lectured me. It was my third-least favourite of her faces. In the last six months before I left home, she wore it virtually all the time.”  
  
“Did your parents want you to get married, too?”  
  
“Well, mostly they wanted me to stop getting caught attaching boys to curtain rails, but yes, that was the plan. Eventually. I mean, I was far too young for marriage, then. I still am, come to that. They would have started nagging me about it in a few decades’ time, once I’d finished studying. Education first, _then_ the bloodline! They had all the charts and possible combinations worked out in advance, though, and they were upset I was ruining their reputation before they got to use any of them.”  
  
“Were you nobility, then?”  
  
Ire laughed. “Gods no, quite the opposite. My pa was a fisherman and my ma taught children to read. Everyone does it. Planning good bloodlines is the national sport of Summerset.”  
  
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about High Elf marriage customs. I suppose with your lifespans, you can afford to start later. I envy you that. My mother never stops going on about my precious optimal childbearing years.”  
  
“Well, if religious devotion doesn’t do the trick for you, try my method for never having to worry about your family bothering you again: be convicted of an unfathomably shameful crime!”  
  


On the cusp of midnight, they rounded a final rocky outcrop, and saw the towers of Ghostgate looming, illuminated by the glow of the surrounding Fence. Viatrix gasped with delight. “I made it! I made it in time!” She turned to Ire. “We’ll stay here tonight, and in the morning, you’ll escort me to the shrine itself.” He nodded, too exhausted to argue.

Ghostgate was very strange to Iriel. A fortified temple serving as the gate to volcanic Red Mountain, it was a place for pilgrims and Buoyant Armigers, the holy warriors of Vivec. Everyone had an impossibly solemn air about them, as if even the cup of tea they were making were a sacred duty. Iriel felt stifled by piety.

Viatrix had paid for a private room for herself in the hostel, and a bed in the pilgrim’s dormitory for Ire. There being no other pilgrims, he had the place to himself - a low-ceilinged stone room in the basement of the Temple, dimly lit by lanterns. Lying in bed, he could hear soft, hypnotic chanting from the central worship area, and wondered if Viatrix was there with them.

_I wish I were a spiritual person, instead of seeing religion as a bizarre and desperate mortal reaction to being constantly threatened by immensely powerful immortal beings. It must be nice to have, you know, actual faith in them, instead of just hoping to remain beneath their notice._

_I suppose it could still happen. I should try to connect with the spiritual atmosphere here, instead of lying here wishing I had some skooma. I might have a religious experience, and be converted the truth of the divine. That does happen to people._  
  
_I wonder if it happened to him?_  
  
_Suddenly overcome by the desire for transcendence, falling to his knees, longing to devote himself body and soul to–_

_…holy fuck..._

The Temple worshippers prayed and chanted ecstatically in the holy sanctum above, and far below, Iriel failed really hard at not thinking about Kaye.


	29. pride

She looked at him with unmitigated disgust. “We are about to pass through the sacred barrier of the Ghostfence, which shields us from evil through the combined faith of thousands of souls of the honoured departed. We are about to leave their protection, place our lives in the hands of the Three, and approach the most sacred shrine in the entire pilgrimage. Is that really how you intend to approach it? In that condition?“  
  
Iriel glared at her through bloodshot eyes, until the light became too painful, and he had to close them again. "You.” he said. A surge of nausea forced him to stop. He took a breath and tried again, as she stared at him, uncomprehending.  
  
“You. Dragged me here. Against my will. Without any of my things. Like clean clothes, and hairbrushes, and. Stuff.” _liKE my fucKinG SKoOma yOu SpOiLed, selF-CentrED–  
_  
“Well, I’m not standing for it,” she said, planting a hand firmly on her hip. “It’s disrespectful.”  
  
Over the course of the next hour, the force of Viatrix’s will propelled Iriel through a bath, a comb, and into a clean shirt and pants sourced from wherever they sourced such things around Ghostgate. _proBably unsucCessful piLgrims_ , Ire thought, but he was some considerable distance past caring.

Outside the citadel, the raging ash storm covered them both in red dust the moment they stepped through the door. In particular, it stuck to Iriel’s damp hair, but his tormentor held up a warning hand when he began to complain about the futility of her enforced ablutions.  
  
“Don’t say a word. It doesn’t _matter_. The important thing is that we cleansed ourselves. It’s _symbolic_.” Behind her translucent veil, her eyes narrowed, still not satisfied with his appearance. “Why wouldn’t you let them give you a robe?”  
  
“Don’t like robes. Too magey.” He stopped to spit out the ash that had already collected in his mouth.

She wrinkled her nose, and opened her bag. “At least put this on. It will help keep the ash off. Once we’re on the mountain, you could catch the Blight if you don’t take better care.”  
  
“Thanks, Ma,” he muttered, but wrapped the scarf she gave him around his mouth and nose. It was made of stoneflower-blue silk, and embroidered with tiny sequins. “Plain and simple pilgrim fare again, I see,” he said, and took satisfaction in her expression as the barb hit its mark. Then she rallied.  
  
“It’s true that my clothes are expensive. When I left home, they were the only kind I had. I could have sold them and replaced them with rags, but what would that achieve? I am who I am. I see no purpose in hiding it. I will prove myself to my gods through my actions and my faith.”  
  
She locked her gaze on the entrance to Red Mountain, and strode resolutely forwards. He followed like a lamb.  
  
  
The Ghostgate itself was a tunnel, multi-barriered like an airlock, each operated by a switch. Beyond, the air was red and sulphurous, as befitted the slopes of a volcano. According to the Temple, this was because the Devil, Dagoth Ur, lived in the central crater, plotting the destruction of the Tribunal, and cursing the land with his evil ash-blight.  
  
For his part, Ire considered the natural hazards to be unpleasant enough, without superstitious enhancements. He could see no more than a few feet in front of him, and could barely hear anything for the wind. It wasn’t far to the shrine, though, and they encountered none of the terrifying ash beasts the Armigers boasted of slaying, in the hostel bar.

Viatrix stood before the small, stone triolith, reading the inscription. “You may go now,” she said. “I wish to meditate.”  
  
He hesitated. “Will you be all right here, alone?”  
  
She didn’t turn to look at him as she replied, her voice full of emotion. “Of course. I am under the blessing of Almsivi.” Reverently, she placed a soul gem before the shrine, and knelt before it, praying aloud. “Thank you for your pride, Lord Vivec. I shall not doubt myself, or my people, or my gods…”  
  
Ire sensed that he was intruding, but he still wasn’t convinced he should leave her completely alone out here. At the same time, he felt like he’d been pushed through a sieve, and wanted nothing more than to curl up in a dark corner with his skooma pipe.  
  
He realised, with irritation, that his last Recall point was set right outside Arobar Manor, which was not somewhere he should risk re-materialising. He had hidden the Redoran helm in an ash dune outside Ald'ruhn, but had no idea if he still had a bounty. Perhaps the guards were just waiting until Viatrix was safely out of the picture.  
  
He had Baladas’ map in his pocket, and huddled in the shelter of a rock, trying to make out the details. Almsivi Intervention, he assumed, would just take him back to Ghostgate. Divine Intervention looked a better bet - he ought to end up at Buckmoth Fort, and could approach Ald'ruhn carefully from the outskirts. Except that he had never bothered to learn a Divine Intervention spell.  
  
He noticed, too, that several major Dwemer citadels were inside the Ghostfence, two not very far distant. He wasn’t suicidal enough to try reaching them, but it was frustrating to wonder what secrets they held, now that he was closer than he was ever likely to be again. _Oh, who are yOu kidding, that projEct is dead in the wateR._  
  
His reverie was shattered by something small, grey and furious that jumped on him from the rocks above, knocking him to the ground. He rolled in the dust and looked up just as the creature cast a shockball right into his face, sending him into paroxysms of agonised twitching.  
  
Survival instincts kicking in, he returned fire from his prone position, but only succeeded in intercepting the next attack, the two spells colliding in mid-air and detonating. This happened twice more, until Iriel’s magicka supply outlasted the ash beast’s, and he finally took it down in an explosion of panicked sparks.  
  
He got shakily to his feet, and staggered back to check on Viatrix. She was still kneeling, eyes closed, a beatific expression on her face. “For fuck’s sake,” he panted. “How much longer do you plan to do that for?”  
  
She ignored him, or possibly was on too high a spiritual plane to hear him. He could almost believe she really was protected by the Tribunal, but either way, he certainly wasn’t. “I’ll be down by the gate. Scream if you need me.”  
  
He was almost at the tunnel when he realised he _could_ hear screaming, but it was coming from the other side.


	30. possible

There was a writhing heap of green in the dust outside Ghostgate. Once Iriel exited the tunnel, he could make out scales, claws and long, reptilian tails. He dragged a name from his memory: clannfears, a minor variety of Daedra. Several of them, eating something.

As he watched, the clannfears’ meal howled, and exploded into flames. The Daedra went flying, and Ire ducked back into the tunnel before he lost his eyebrows. When he looked back, a familiar-looking Dunmer man in a scratched mixture of netch and chitin armour was there.  
  
Wild-eyed and bleeding from multiple wounds, he was preparing another fire spell. “You want MORE, you fetchers?! COME AT ME THEN!!!” He didn’t finish the spell before they, as instructed, came at him, and with a scream, he vanished once more beneath a pile of Daedra.

Iriel wasn’t sure where to start with spells, since anything he cast was likely to hit the Dunmer as well as the clannfears. He went with the inelegant but effective method of casting Paralyse on everything in sight, then hauling out rigid reptiles by their tails, one by one, and bombarding them with frost spells. The Dunmer had collapsed against a rock, and was loosing arrows into the final Daedra as fast as he could. Eventually all was peaceful, aside from the wind, the Dunmer’s ragged breathing, and the interminable pounding in Iriel’s head.

The Dunmer leaned his head back against the rock, eyes closed, grimacing. Iriel could confirm his initial recognition now, although the young man looked in far worse shape than Ire had last seen him. But his angular face was unmistakable, all eyebrows and nose, and his lank black hair still hung in uneven strands, none quite reaching his shoulders. His armour was battered, mismatched and incomplete: no greaves, only chitin boots and guarskin pants that the Daedra’s claws had torn through like tissue paper. No helm, only a scarf against the ash, long since fallen loose, and a netch leather cuirass that looked considerably older than he was.

Iriel began to ask if he was all right, but as soon as he began, the Dunmer opened his eyes, and furiously attempted to focus them on Ire.  
  
“What?” he snarled. “What do you want, Altmer? D’you expect me to thank you for your help? I didn’t _want_ it. Everything was under control.”  
  
Ire stared at him incredulously. “Under… control?” _gOds, i am too sUgar-depriVed for this riGhT noW._

“Yes!” the Dunmer hissed, through gritted teeth. “I was training myself! I could have beaten them, if you hadn’t…” He coughed, wincing. “Typical outlander, barging in where you’re not wanted. Next time stay… out of–” The sentence was lost in a coughing fit, interspersed with whimpers of pain.

Iriel was in absolutely no mood to prop up someone else’s over-active machismo. “You’re bleeding to death,” he observed, neutrally.  
  
“I’m fine!” insisted the Dunmer, between rasping coughs. “It’s nothing, just a–” Ire pointed mutely to a large, freely-bleeding gash in the Dunmer’s thigh, and the elf’s expression changed. “Oh. Sheogorath, that’s… more blood than I…” He tried to get to his feet, but the moment he tried to put weight on the injured leg, his face turned pale, and he fell back with a sharp groan. “I can’t… nngh…”

Iriel blinked. “Well, I can see you don’t need any assistance. I’ll let you carry on with your training. Don’t worry, I’m sure something even more horrible will be along soon.” He turned to leave, wondering vaguely how far he’d get. Three steps, as it turned out.  
  
“Wait! Please.” There was panic spilling into the Dunmer’s voice. “It’s… possible… I could use some help.”  
  
Ire had a splitting headache, and a fraction of his usual ability to tolerate fools, which was never high to begin with, especially those with more pride than sense. “Possible?” he said.

The Dunmer growled. “Fine! I need your help! Happy now? I’m not about to beg you, n'wah. I’d rather bleed to death. But if you won’t help me, then go away and let me die in peace.” He glared at Ire with the last vestiges of his defiance, until it all suddenly crumbled.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. You’re right. About everything. Nothing’s under control, everything’s…” He coughed again, and struggled to breathe. “You… saved my life, but… what’s the use? It won’t be for long. I’m out of potions, magicka…” His voice shook. “Please. I… I don’t want to die. Not here, not like this.”

Iriel rubbed his forehead. “Hold still. I’ll see what I can do.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve taken you to bed, you know.” Iriel supported the Dunmer as he sat down, and lifted his injured leg onto the covers. They were in Viatrix’s room in the Ghostgate hostel, because it was closest, and because Iriel considered that she owed him.  
  
“What?!”  
  
“Never mind. I was joking, poorly. Now, those spells I cast have slowed the bleeding, but I’m appalling at Restoration. It still looks bad. I’m going to go and get the healer from the Tower of Dawn.”

“Wait! Don’t go.” The Dunmer was looking at him with a confusion that teetered on the brink of epiphany. “Go back to the part about… about…”  
  
Ire couldn’t help pushing it slightly further. “You don’t remember when we slept together, back in Ald'ruhn?”  
  
The Dunmer’s expression passed through various stages, from its starting point in confusion, through incredulity to horrified realisation. He swallowed. “I _was_ in Ald'ruhn. And you _do_ seem familiar, somehow… But I… I… don’t think… I mean, I’m not… I’m sure I would remember that.” He stared, blankly, obviously struggling to sort through his memories. “I… I was drinking a lot, and sometimes it’s all just a blank when I wake up, but…”

The joke had already worn thin for Iriel, who decided to cut his losses before he heard something he would regret instigating. “We shared a room, not a bed,” he said crisply. “You were unconscious. Nothing else happened, so you can stop worrying. I assure you, passed-out-drunk vagrants are really not my type.” _TruSt me, I’ve been a pAssed out vagranT, and I’m deFinitely not my tYpe either._  
  
He lowered his scarf, and sat on the end of the bed, nausea washing over him again. _I nEed to get bacK to Ald'ruhn befOre this withdrawal Gets any worse._

“Gah!!” The Dunmer brandished a finger at Ire, who flinched at the sudden noise. “You! You were the one who was looking for the Dwemer!” Ire nodded, moving his head as gently as possible.  
  
The Dunmer leaned forward, examining Iriel. “I didn’t recognise you under that scarf! And I thought your hair was brown, for some reason.”  
  
“It is. I’m covered in red ash.” Ire shook his head, before instantly remembering why that was such a bad idea. He moaned in pain.  
  
“Are you OK? No offence, but you look terrible. Are you ill? You didn’t catch the Blight out there, did you?”  
  
Ire leaned forwards, head in his hands. “I’m not diseased. It’s… just a headache.”  
  
The Dunmer nodded, sympathetically. “Drink?”


	31. help

They sat at the hostel bar, receiving dirty looks from the Ordinators and Temple priestesses. “Ignore those s'wits,” the Dunmer said. “They’re sneering at me, not you. It’s been like this since I arrived.” He put on a mocking voice. “‘What’s that smell in here? Oh, it’s the Ashlander.’ Prejudiced scuttleheads, the lot of them.” He swigged his mazte.

Iriel elected not to comment on the smell, or any other factors contributing to his suspicion the other elf hadn’t bathed or changed his clothes since their last encounter, over a month ago. Instead, he asked, “What does that mean, an Ashlander?”  
  
The Dunmer thumped his mug down on the bar, and turned to Ire with an intense look. “We are the Velothi, the true people of Morrowind, the only ones left uncorrupted by foreign influence. We alone keep faith with the traditions of our ancestors. But the Empire and their lackeys have stolen our fertile land, and forced us into the wastes, where our lives may be harsh, but we retain our pride and our culture!”  
  
The rehearsed part of his speech over, he shrugged and took another drink. “You’ve probably heard we hate outlanders. Some of us, maybe. Me, I hate anyone who takes what’s rightfully mine and tries to tell me how to live, whether it’s outlanders or those Great House s'wits in the cities.”  
  
“I see,” said Ire, non-committally. “And do you have a name?”  
  
“Of course I have a _name_ , what do you take me for? D’you think we don’t even have proper language, that we’re just savages who–”  
  
Iriel waved his hands, trying to interrupt. “It was just a figure of speech! My name is Iriel! Tell me yours!”  
  
“Oh, right. Sorry, I’m an idiot. I mean… I’m Julan. Julan Kaushibael of the Ahemmusa. Well… sort of… I’m officially an outcast, but… ah… it’s complicated. Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m completely devoted to my people, it’s just…”  
  
“They’re not as devoted to you?”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
“Don’t worry, I know the feeling.”  
  
“So, did you find the Dwemer yet?” Julan was grinning.  
  
Iriel wasn’t. “No,” he said.  
  
“Why not? It sounded like you were onto something, back then!”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t. Or perhaps I was, but it doesn’t matter any more.” He sighed. “In truth, I haven’t done any work on it in a long time. For a variety of reasons, my progress has been… stalled.”  
  
“That sounds familiar.”  
  
“Does it?”  
  
Julan was silent for a moment, furrowing his brow, and staring into his beer. “I’m supposed to be a great warrior,” he said. “It’s expected of me. But I spend all my time training, and I’m still not good enough. Gah! What would they think of me, back home, if they knew I had been rescued by an outlander? An _Altmer_ , for Azura’s sake! Uh… I mean… no offence, but it looks bad.”

“Oh yes, it must be unbearably embarrassing,” said Ire, raising his eyebrows. “Everyone knows all Dunmer are required to defeat armies of Daedra single-handed, or they confiscate your testicles. In Summerset, they just castrate us all at birth, it saves time.”  
  
Julan didn’t appear to notice the sarcasm, or to be paying much attention at all. “Thanks,“ he said vaguely, "but you don’t understand. It’s not just about Daedra. You have no idea what I have to do, or what’s at stake, here.”

Iriel sipped his drink, and discreetly shook his head at the bartender, who looked as if she might offer to refill Julan’s mug. “So tell me,” he said.  
  
“It’s not that simple.” muttered the Ashlander. “I can’t talk about it. Definitely not with outlanders. All you need to know is that I have a sacred mission I need to carry out within the Ghostfence on behalf of my tribe… and others. But I’ve been training here for a week now, and I can’t even deal with the stuff on this side of the fence!”  
  
With a guilty lurch, Ire remembered Viatrix, up there alone on Red Mountain, certain the Tribunal were holding her safe in their blessing. Once the situation was explained, Julan heaved a sigh. “My mother’s like that. She has this… terrifying faith. In her gods, and in me. That’s why I have to succeed. Disappointing her isn’t an option. But I don’t… I can’t… Gah. I think too much, that’s my problem. I need to stop doubting everything.”

Iriel wrinkled his nose. “Did you really just imply that you’re going up Red Mountain because your mother told you to?”  
  
“No! I’m not… I’m not doing this because she told me to! I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do! But I don’t know if I can.” He scraped the bar-top with a grubby fingernail. “That’s why I was wondering… you’ve been inside the Ghostfence. I saw you, you came through the gate. So you must be strong enough to handle it. And maybe…” His eyes narrowed, suspicious. “No, forget it. I don’t know you. I don’t know why you helped me, but you could have any reason, it doesn’t mean I can trust you.”  
  
"Oh, absolutely,” said Ire. “I saved your life, but no doubt I had some terribly sinister ulterior motive.”  
  
Julan stared at the bar, frowning. Then his lip curled. “I guess we _did_ sleep together. Be rude of me to claim I don’t know you now, right?”  
  
Iriel laughed, mostly through sheer relief that it had become something they could joke about, that the other man’s obvious discomfort with the idea had stopped hanging between them like a big awkward cloud.  
  
“Sheogorath! I can’t keep on like this!” Julan smacked a hand onto the bartop, and Ire flinched, spilling his drink. “I can’t keep thinking everyone else is the enemy, that I have to do everything on my own, because it’s not working, and it’s driving me mad. I have to try something different, or fail. And I _can’t_ fail. So, I’m going to just ask you. Would you train me? Help me get better at magic, so that I can survive on Red Mountain?”

“I… what? No!” Iriel stammered. “I can’t stay here to train you. I didn’t want to come here to begin with, and I’m leaving as soon as possible.”  
  
“That’s just it! I was thinking I could come with you. You want to explore Dwemer ruins, right? Well, I could help! I’m no scholar, but I could protect you while you study them! I can fight, I can cast fire spells, and a couple of healing ones. I’ll do all I can not to be a burden to you. What do you think?”  
  
Iriel’s internal panic generator whirred into life. _I’m not a teacher! I can’t even take care of myself! I can’t even deal with my own brain, most of the time! I’m homeless, a drug addict and a criminal! I’m being hunted by multiple groups who want to jail me, or enslave me to the Emperor! I can’t maintain any kind of relationship, even a friendship, without everything going to shit! I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with my life, or if it’s even possible for me to find anything worth doing with it.  
  
But perhaps… all of these things would be just slightly more bearable… if I wasn’t so fucking alone all the time._  
  
He looked at Julan, who was watching him intently, apprehensively, obviously expecting to be told “no” again. His hair was full of ash and tangles. The healer had fixed his leg, but his armour was still scratched to pieces, and the clothes underneath looked to have more rips than fabric. Iriel wondered again if he was younger than him, or older. There couldn’t be much in it.  
  
_He doesn’t look as if he has his life together any more than I do. He has nothing to lose by coming with me, so how badly could I screw this up?_  
  
_You could get him killed._  
  
_He’s already doing that on his own, though. What’s going to happen to him, if he stays here? You can’t make it worse._  
  
_Iriel, if you’ve learned anything at all, it should be that you can always make it worse._  
  
“All right,” he said, and was immediately alarmed by the way Julan’s red eyes lit up. “For now, at any rate. But please don’t expect too much. And please don’t treat me like I’m your teacher, or your superior or anything like that. If we’re travelling together, it’s as friends, that’s all.”  
  
Julan nodded. “Friends, then,” he smiled, and clinked his mug to Ire’s.

 


	32. headache

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Iriel asked, for the third time.  
  
“No. Yes. No. Yes. No… Yes.”  
  
“Well, as long as you’re sure.”  
  
A Buoyant Armiger clad in emerald glass armour came out of the Tower of Dawn. “Hey Julan, off to climb Red Mountain again?” Laughing uproariously, she breezed past him and joined Iriel in the tunnel. “He’s been doing this all week, you know,” she confided cheerfully. “Never gotten more than halfway through. Sad, really. Even the pilgrims manage _that_.” She hit the second gate switch and strode off onto the mountain, vanishing into the red winds.

Ire leaned against the tunnel wall, massaging his temples and questioning how much more of this he could take. It had been Julan’s idea, after all, to return to the mountainside one last time, before leaving Ghostgate. “Not far,” he’d insisted, “just through the gate. I need to… prove something.”  
  
Iriel had offered only token resistance. Despite the increasing agony of his skooma withdrawal, he still felt guilty about leaving Viatrix, and it meant he could check she hadn’t been eaten by a Scamp. Besides, it wouldn’t take long.  
  
Except that Julan had been staring at the tunnel for ten minutes, now, with no signs of progress. Ire really didn’t understand the problem, and Julan was having trouble explaining.  
  
“There’s just this… thing,” he said, pacing back and forth in front of the gate switch. “I don’t know what it is, and I know it’s not really there, but it… stops me.”  
  
“It doesn’t stop me, or Viatrix, or the Armigers,” Ire said.  
  
“I know that, you s'wit!”  
  
“Is it the storm? Because it’s just as bad on both sides.”  
  
“IT’S NOT THE STORM!”  
  
“Julan, I’ve got a splitting headache, and I really can’t do this much longer. If you don’t want to go through the gate, then let’s start walking back to Ald'ruhn.”  
  
“I CAN DO THIS!”  
  
“Well, _do_ it, then!”  
  
Growling, Julan marched into the tunnel, but before he could reach the mid-point, he flinched as if struck. He remained frozen for several seconds, wide-eyed and panting, then he stumbled backwards into Iriel and clung to his shirt.  
  
“Nggggh… It’s no good. I can’t… It’s all… I…” Red-on-red eyes stared into Iriel’s, their Dunmeri glow bright in the dim tunnel. “Please, let’s get out of here. Please. My head is… I can’t…”  
  
Taken aback (and shoved into the wall) by the sudden contact, Ire’s only response was a grunt of surprise, and an exasperated grimace. He squinted down the tunnel, trying to figure out what Julan was so traumatised by, but all he saw was the Armiger returning with Viatrix.  
  
The Imperial woman nodded to him, as she passed. “I see you’ve found a friend. I don’t require your services any longer, so you are dismissed. Keep the scarf.” To his surprise, she gave him a genuine smile. “It suits you more than me, anyway.”  
  
Julan was still hanging from Ire’s ugly hessian pilgrim shirt, his breathing erratic and much too fast. “Canwegonow? Please?” One hand let go of Ire to scrabble in his pocket.  
  
Iriel rolled his eyes. “Of course we fucking can! You were the one who wanted to– hey! What are you doing? Stop tha–!!”  
  
It was too late. Julan activated the Intervention charm, and Iriel was teleported with a stomach-churning mystical lurch.  
  
They landed in a dusty heap outside a Tribunal Temple. Sitting up, Ire took in his surroundings with mounting panic. “This is Ald'ruhn! Why didn’t you _warn_ me! Shit!”  
  
He started an invisibility spell, but Julan grabbed his arm, jerking it out of arcane alignment. “I know what you’re thinking!” he gasped into Iriel’s face, eyes still wild and feverish. “You think I’m a coward, don’t you?”  
  
Ire marvelled at Julan’s ability to make everything about him. “I don’t care!” he squeaked, trying to regain his arm, but Julan wasn’t finished.  
  
“I… I don’t know what happened back there,” he insisted, “but I’m a _warrior_ , you have to believe me! I’m not afraid of pain, or dying, and I’m not afraid of the creatures on Red Mountain. It’s something else, something to do with… with all these weird dreams, and–”

“All right, I believe you! Now get off me, I’m trying to cast! I think I have a fucking bounty here! Hold still, I’m going to try to hide both of us. Don’t touch anything, or it’ll dispel!”  
  
He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath and began casting. Halfway though the incantation, he opened his eyes to find Julan was already gone, not vanished, but walking towards a notice board on the nearby wall. “What are you doing?” Ire hissed after him, scuttling, crablike, into the shadow of the Temple doorway.  
  
A few seconds later, Julan was back. “You don’t have a bounty,” he said. “I checked the list.”  
  
“Oh.” Ire clambered cautiously to his feet, and brushed himself down. “I suppose that works.”  
  
  
“You mentioned you were having weird dreams,” enquired Iriel, in the hope of distracting himself from the constant urge to cast chameleon spells as they walked through Ald'ruhn.  
  
Julan shrugged, gaze flickering warily across each passer by, but avoiding Iriel’s face. “It’s nothing. Just stupid nonsense.” When Ire didn’t probe further, he sighed, and added: “Stuff about Red Mountain, usually. Climbing upwards in the dark, ash getting into my eyes and mouth. Getting harder to move.”  
  
“Sounds unpleasant.”  
  
“Oh, that part’s OK. But that’s when the voices start… whispering things.”  
  
“Things?” prompted Ire, when Julan fell silent again.  
  
“You know…” He made an unhelpfully vague gesture. “Just things. I don’t know if I can’t understand what they’re saying in the dream, or if I always forget it, after I wake up. I just know they sound… not good. I mean… you’ve heard of Dagoth Ur, right?” He glanced at Ire, now, gauging his reaction.  
  
Ire wasn’t sure what he was expected to say. “Isn’t Dagoth Ur some kind of local… bogeyman?” he hazarded. “The devil who lives in the mountain, who’ll come out and steal children if they don’t obey their parents?”  
  
“Hah.” Julan smirked, cheered by Ire’s misconception. “I guess that _is_ the impression an outlander would get. But we Dunmer know there’s more to Dagoth Ur than stories. D’you know what soul sickness is?”  
  
“I thought it was just the Temple’s word for sin.”  
  
Julan shook his head. “It’s when Dagoth Ur sends dreams to people, to make them go mad, and worship him. They lose their minds, start eating their own flesh, become violent. It’s real. I’ve seen it.”  
  
Ire thought of the Dunmer woman in St Delyn, hitting him over and over, smiling as she slowly burned to death. He felt ill. “You… you have soul sickness?” he asked, weakly.  
  
A scowl. “No! I’ve just been having bad dreams, that’s all! I’m not insane, and I’m not planning to be!”  
  
“Then what _are_ you saying?”  
  
“I’m saying that Dagoth Ur is real, but so’s the Emperor, and it doesn’t mean that if I dream about him, he’s really talking to me! It’s nothing.”  
  
“If it’s nothing, then what’s the problem? How is it related to your inability to go through the Ghostgate?”  
  
Julan stared at the ground, kicking up the ash as he walked. “It’s not. I mean, it was, but it won’t be. I’m working on it.” He sighed. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I need to get stronger, that’s all.” A forced half-smile. “Maybe you could teach me that spell you used on the Clannfears, to take my mind off things.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Iriel said, distracted. What he was actually thinking was that he needed to get rid of Julan for a few hours. He didn’t want to scare him with the intimate details of his skooma problem just yet, but his condition was becoming critical. Knowing his stash was just a few yards away, in the Rat in the Pot, meant he could barely concentrate on anything else.  
  
“There’s something you should know,” he said, hiding a worse confession with a lesser one. “I’m in the Thieves’ Guild.” Seeing Julan’s eyebrows go up. he continued quickly, “I was expelled from the Mages Guild, and I needed a way to get money. It’s purely temporary, I’m not some kind of career criminal. I plan to stop as soon as I find something better. Honestly, I’m terrible at it.”  
  
He told the story of the Redoran helm, and his enforced trip to Ghostgate, to Julan’s increasing amusement. “Stealing from stupid nobles is fine with me,” he told Ire. “They’ve taken enough from everyone else!”  
  
Ire nodded, happy to encourage this train of thought. “Right, but now I need to go and talk to my boss at the Rat in the Pot, and he won’t like me bringing strangers in.” He took out his coinpurse and shovelled whatever gold he still had on him into Julan’s hands. “Why don’t you go and find some better clothes, or armour, or whatever you need, and I’ll meet you at the Ald Skar Inn at nightfall.”  
  
  
  
Iriel had learned a lot about skooma since his first experience with the drug sent him on a multi-hour hallucinogenic rampage. For example, he now knew better than to drink two whole bottles at once. One bottle, carefully inhaled in vapour-form over an hour or two via a skooma pipe, was sufficient to induce a state of deep relaxation and anaesthetic euphoria. Collapsed in a corner of the tavern basement, he would lie, watching surreal images float across the back of his eyelids until he fell into a black, fathomless sleep.  
  
A sleep that, today, remained neither black nor fathomless for long, because Tongue-Toad, the guild’s dapper Argonian savant, shook him awake. “You shouldn’t be here, Iriel. That Bosmer’s been asking questions again, and she’s still watching the place. I don’t think she saw you come in, but you might want to skip town, until she gets bored. It’s making Aengoth jumpier than a flea on a Khajiiti acrobat.”  
  
Ire groaned, and rolled over, trying to clear his mind of hallucinogenic detritus.  
  
“Iriel, I’m serious! With this and the skooma, you’re becoming a liability, and you know it!”  
  
“She’s back!” Allding the fence came down the stairs three at a time, which his long Nordic legs made easy. “I just saw her talking to the silt strider guy!”  
  
Tongue-Toad shook Iriel again, eliciting further moans and feeble hand-flailing. “Sounds like the strider’s out of bounds. Are you listening to me? You need to leave!”  
  
Ire sat bolt upright. “Yes! Yes! You’re right. I’m awake! I’m going!” He began to throw his possessions frantically into a bag, yet again.


	33. civilised

Julan was dragged off his barstool by an invisible hand, startling both him and the pretty barmaid he had been chatting to. “It’s me!” Iriel hissed wildly into his ear. “We have to get out of town, _now!_ ”  
  
“I can’t even finish my conversation?”  
  
Ire snorted. “I’m sure her breasts were excellent conversationalists, but no. We don’t have time!”  
  
“I had half a bottle left, you know,” Julan said in aggrieved tones as Ire pulled him, sequentially, out of the door, around the corner and over the city boundary.  
  
“Well, I have far more than half my life left, and I am _not_ spending any more of it in jail!”  
  
“What are you running from? I told you, you don’t have a bounty!”  
  
Iriel really didn’t want to get into all the details. He settled for the broadly true: “Someone’s after me. I’m not sure who, but I need to get out of town to keep attention off the Thieves’ Guild.”

“I thought you were a scholar,” yelled Julan as Ire struggled up a rocky cliff, having picked a direction, and decided to stick to it. “What does someone like _you_ have to do to make that kind of enemy? Fold down another mage’s book corners?”  
  
He watched Ire try and fail to pull himself up an overhang. “You know there’s a path over here, right?” he enquired, just as the weight of Ire’s bag overcame him, and he fell into a dusty, crumpled heap.  
  
Julan helped him up, and passed him his fallen bag, eyebrows shooting up at the weight of it. "What in Oblivion do you have in here? No wonder it was pulling you down!”  
  
As Julan moved to open the bag, Iriel snatched it away. “Books,” he said, “…mostly. Alchemy equipment. A few personal items.” _Not nearly enough skooma, but I didn’t have time to get more from Lirielle before I left_.  
  
“Look, put some of your books in my pack, or we’ll never get… where _are_ we going, anyway? Do you even know?” Silence. “You have no idea, do you? Sheogorath…”  
  
  
They stopped to rest for the night at the western edge of the Ashlands. Iriel’s time sleeping rough had been amateur to say the least, so he was easily impressed by Julan’s actual survival skills. Such as building proper fires, instead of haphazardly incinerating the local wildlife. He was even more amazed when the Ashlander disappeared for ten minutes, then returned with a nix-hound slung over his shoulders, which he proceeded to disassemble and cook in slices over the fire.  
  
Julan was bemused by Iriel’s awed reaction. “You’ve really never done this? Ever?”  
  
Ire shook his head. “I suppose it can’t be that far from alchemy, but I never learned. I can’t even boil an egg. I wouldn’t know where to start, cutting up a huge animal like that.”  
  
“Hah. But _I’m_ the savage, and _you’re_ the civilised one. Riiiiight.” Julan laughed to himself, as he turned the meat over.  
  
“I never said that!”  
  
“I know. But _they_ think that, in the cities.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Ald'ruhn. “They think we’re violent barbarians who live in filth. They think we’re not civilised, because they measure everyone by themselves. They don’t try to understand our culture, or why we might choose to live as we do.”  
  
“Well,” said Ire, “I’m not complaining. You’ll have to teach me.”  
  
“I thought _you_ were going to teach me things!”  
  
“I did promise that, didn’t I?” Ire chewed his lip. “All right. I did notice something. Your fire spells are certainly powerful, but your form is all over the place. You have no way of controlling or directing the intensity. The correct finger position would help. Show me again how you do it.”  
  
As Julan obligingly aimed a spell into the air, Ire peered at his hands, brow furrowed. “Extend your index finger more. No, like this.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s making any diff— oh! I see! Mephala, that’s amazing!”  
  
They shot fireballs into the night sky, until the meat was ready.  
  
  
“Where are you from, exactly?” asked Iriel, lying on his stomach by the fire, surreptitiously transferring small amounts of moon sugar into his mouth from his bag via a licked finger.  
  
“The north-eastern Grazelands. D'you have a map?” Ire handed it over, and Julan traced a finger in a vague arc. “The Ahemmusa move through this area, depending on the season. My mother and I live here, on the coast. Hey… are these Dwemer ruins marked on here?”  
  
When Iriel nodded, Julan’s deep red eyes glittered like garnets in the firelight. “Let’s go explore one, then! This one in the Bitter Coast would be closest. It’s still a long journey, but you wanted to get far away, right?”  
  
Ire squinted to read Baladas’ spidery handwriting. “Aleft, it’s called. I… suppose we could take a look. Hmm… It’s south of Gnaar Mok.”

 _Why does that ring a bell? It’s probably a smuggling town like Hla Oad, so there might be skooma, but that’s not it, what am I thinking of?_  
  
_Oh! That’s where I heard Caryarel might be, the Altmer who stole Kaye’s limeware bowl! If I get that back, I have a reason to go and see him again!_  
  
Awash with elation (and moon sugar), he grinned maniacally. “Let’s do it!”

 


	34. medicine

“I’m telling you, we’re too far north! We should be in the swamps by now. Let me see the map again!” Only a few yards of West Gash scrubland separated them, but Julan had to shout to be heard.  
  
“If I get out the map in this rain,” Iriel yelled back, “it will turn to soggy fragments in seconds, and we’ll never find anything!”  
  
The weather in Morrowind didn’t do anything by halves. It was hurling water out of the sky as if its reputation depended on it, thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure. Iriel shielded his eyes with his hand and peered through the deluge. “What’s that up there, with the square outline? Is it a building?”  
  
“It’s shelter! Come on!”

It was an old Dunmer stronghold, a huge network of stone chambers extending into the ground, with a broad plaza on top, and a door to the entrance level.  
  
“These places were abandoned by the House people, but I don’t really get why,” Julan said as they approached. “It means there could be anything in here now, so stay alert.”  
  
“Anything” turned out to mean bandits, who surged to the defence of their lair from every shadow. Thrown into combat, Ire struggled to maintain his focus through a rush of mind-flaying panic. He had to aim his spells precisely to avoid hitting Julan, which had been hard enough when they’d been out in the open. Now he had to deal with a dark confined space, and multiple bandits attacking from all sides.  
  
Julan, being a more enthusiastic than effective battlemage, had switched to sword and shield, but his chitin equipment was in poor condition, and their opponents were well-armed. While they felled several of the bandits, It wasn’t long before they were cornered in a storeroom by the remainder, including their leader, a fierce Dunmer with a nasty jinkblade in her hand.

“We can’t win this!” Iriel gasped. “Use your Intervention charm!” He clutched at a bleeding gash in his side, as their attackers began to break through the door. “I’m out of magic, and there at least three of them out there.”  
  
“No!”  
  
“What do you mean, ‘no’?!”  
  
“I’m not running!”  
  
“Would you put down your stupid warrior pride for a second so that we can get out of this ali– stop it!! Get back here!!”  
  
Ire screwed shut his eyes and flinched back into the corner until all the screaming and wet noises stopped. When he finally got up the nerve to look, Julan, covered in blood but grinning, was already going through the bandits’ things. “Look at the boots on this one!” he said. “I’m having these! Nice shield, too.”  
  
Iriel sagged against the stonework. “Would you please  _warn_ me if you’re going to do that again!”  
  
“OK. I’m going to do that again.”  
  
“No! I didn’t mean… You can’t just… ugh…” His vision clouded, his ears buzzed and he slid down the wall to the floor.  
  
When he regained his senses, he was lying in a room lit by candles and a huge stone fire-pit. There were tapestries on the walls, and surprisingly rich furnishings. Julan was going through a chest over by the wall. “Not bad, huh?” he said, seeing Ire’s confused expression. “These bandits have been living in luxury down here. How’re you feeling? You lost some blood, but I think I healed it. Hang on, don’t try to get up!”  
  
“Why not, I–AAAAAAAAAAGH!!”  
  
Julan came over and pulled him off the floor. “Sorry, they only have hammocks. I guess luxury has its limits.”  
  
Ire lay back down, very carefully. “Where’s my bag?” he said, through gritted teeth. When he received it, he felt around inside until he found his last half-full skooma bottle, and quickly downed the contents, grimacing as it burned his throat. He knew he ought to smoke it, as the harsh refining solution removed all sweetness from the moon sugar, but he needed the effects fast. The pain receded, but the mental impact wasn’t nearly what he’d hoped.  _It’s not enough. But perhaps–  
_  
“What’re you drinking?” Julan raised a questioning eyebrow.  
  
“Medicine,” he said, firmly. He showed Julan the vial. “Did you… happen to find any more bottles like this around here while you were searching?”  
  
“No. But I haven’t checked all of the rooms yet. Wait here.”  
  
He came back after what seemed forever to Iriel, but was probably less than twenty minutes. “I found some more of your 'medicine’.” He held out a vial, just out of Ire’s reach.  
  
“Well? Give it to me then!”  
  
“Do you think I don’t know what this is?” he said, quietly. Ire remained silent, and Julan sighed. “I’m not  _that_ stupid, you know.”  
  
Ire couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

Julan twisted the bottle in his fingers, frowning. “I don’t mean to… uh… Look, I’ve never used this stuff, and I don’t want to. I’ve heard bad things. But still, I… I don’t know you well enough to… I don’t  _know_. And I don’t have the right to tell you what to do. Still... I don’t feel right travelling with someone I know so little about, especially if…”  
  
He trailed off, jaw shifting as he watched Iriel. Getting no response, he continued. “You said something yesterday about not spending any more of your life in jail. You’ve been in jail?”  
  
Ire was looking for a blanket he could pull over his head.  
  
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t strike me as a hardened criminal. What happened?”  
  
“…can i please just have the skooma please…”  
  
“OK, but… I’d like some answers. I think you owe me that much.”  
  
A compromise was reached.  
  
  
“How many questions do I get?” They were sitting against the warm stone wall of the fire-pit, and Julan had found something drinkable in one of the crates.  
  
Ire shrugged, setting up his skooma pipe. “As many as you can before I get too incoherent to answer.”  
  
“I see. Then… first question: how did you end up in Morrowind?”  
  
“On board a prison ship from the Imperial City. They released me here.” He took a hit from the pipe.  
  
“Released you? Here? That’s what they’re doing, now? Dumping Imperial prisoners in Morrowind, as if they haven’t given us enough problems, as if we’re some kind of garbage heap for their criminals?!”  
  
“I’m sorry. It must be very embarrassing for you to have been rescued from clannfears by the Empire’s criminal garbage. Yet here we are.”  
  
“Oh… sorry. I didn’t mean it personally.”  
  
“By the way, that was four questions. To which the answers are: yes, yes, yes and yes. With the caveat that I don’t think they plan on doing it with everyone. I’m highly toxic, extreme-disposal-measures garbage, apparently.”  
  
“Look, I  _said_ I was sorry. Um… so… what did you do? To get locked up, I mean.”  
  
Iriel paused. There had been a time when he had felt that he would literally die if he talked about this to anyone. That the shame of it would rise up from the Pit like a black, oozing tentacle and choke him where he stood. But that was a long time ago. Perhaps he could talk about it. Perhaps he needed to.  
  
“All right,” he said. “But it’s a long answer, and I reserve the right to smoke as much as I want.” He took a long drag, and exhaled slowly before continuing.  
  
“When I was twenty-one, I was at university, in the Imperial City. And while I was there, I met someone. In a cheap seedy bar, which, at the time, I thought was a terribly exciting place to be. I was there on my own, reading a book.”  
  
“It’s true, you do that. I still think it’s weird.”  
  
“It probably is. Anyway, his name was Reuben, he was nineteen, and I think he was supposed to be the bar’s errand boy, or something. He was always terribly vague about everything he did. Not that I cared. I knew that he had eyes like… oh Mara, I’m going to spare you how appallingly poetically I would have described them, at the time. Let’s just say he had blue eyes and dark hair, in a way that was deeply appealing to me, and was handsome, in that sort of rough, compact way that some Imperial men are. Like a cross between a baby bear and a… a… what do you call the back part of boats? I’ve lost the word. The bit with… all the wood?”  
  
“I have no idea, and if I did, I doubt it would help me understand.”  
  
“With a grin you could crack eggs on.”  
  
“That doesn’t even make sense! Slow down with the skooma, will you?”  
  
“You’re meeean. Anyway… he thought it’d be funny to try and distract me from my book. That I’d only been pretending to read since he came in, but I wasn’t about to let  _him_ know that. In the end, he was lying along the bar, balancing full glasses of–”  
  
“He sounds like an asshole.”  
  
“Oh, he absolutely was. And a liar, and a thief. And only interested in me because I was such a obvious first-year Arcane University student; the perfect mark. But I didn’t know that, you see, so I fell in love with him. And for a while, everything was wonderful.”  
  
“It didn’t last, then.”  
  
“It happened during the winter holiday. Most of the other students were going home to their families, but I’d rather have rubbed fire salts into my eyes, so I was staying at the university. And I thought it would be fun to sneak him inside. Show him around a bit. Do terrible things with him in the library that I could remember, later, when I was stuck in there all day, revising. And Reu was always asking me about the magical treasures they had at the university, which, you know… Hindsight. But I’d been learning a lot of illusion magic, and I wanted to see if I could get away with it. To be safe, I’d also made him an amulet with a strong invisibility effect. It all went perfectly, at first. I took him to see the displays of historical artifacts. I sneaked him into Special Collections, pushed him up against the First Era ten-volume set of Milktwyst’s Phrenological Bestiary, bound in gold-inlaid Daedra-skin, and gave him a–”  
  
“I, uh… reallydon’t need all the details.”  
  
“If you insist. It was a seriously impressive set of books, though. Anyway… later, we locked ourselves in my room, somehow fitted into the tiny single bed, and eventually, I fell asleep in his arms. I didn’t wake up in them. I was dragged out of bed by the Imperial City guards, who barged through my no-longer-locked door, bellowing about theft and murder. Reuben, of course, was long gone.”  
  
“Murder?”  
  
“It took me a long time to work out what had even happened. Partly because of the way they were questioning me. They wanted me to confess, so they deliberately withheld details, hoping I’d confirm them. And partly because I wasn’t in the best frame of mind for clarity of thought. Actually, it took until I was sentenced before I heard the full list of charges read out. There was a long list of missing items, but 'theft or destruction of the priceless Namira’s Heart amulet’ was the big one. Even bigger than cutting the throat of Master Aurbien, the Head of Alchemical Studies. He was ninety-seven, which is ancient for a Breton, and very frail. I used to have Intermediate Potions class with him every Tirdas, and he was adorable. He had a laugh like an asthmatic scrib. I suppose he would have died soon in any case, but gods… it shouldn’t have been like that.” Ire drew deeply on the pipe until tiny flecks of impossible colours appeared before his eyes.  
  
“I don’t understand how they could possibly think any of this was you. You’re no murderer.”  
  
“There was no evidence that anyone except me had been around. I had been very careful about keeping Reu hidden. Oh… and they found his bloody dagger under my bed, at the end of a trail of blood droplets. He was never very subtle.”  
  
“Sheogorath… But… surely all the artifacts were gone, so how could you have taken them?”  
  
Ire shuddered. “Those are questions they asked me, repeatedly. I didn’t have answers then, either. I suppose in the end they assumed I’d teleported them, or something.”  
  
“And then gone to bed, in your own room, at the end of a bloody trail?! How stupid did they think you were?”  
  
“Yes, if I hadn’t been so busy having a nervous breakdown, I’d have been mortally offended. None of it was very convincing, but it didn’t need to be. You have to realise, they didn’t really care about justice. They needed a culprit, and they had one.”  
  
“But… didn’t you tell them what really happened? Don’t tell me you confessed, to protect that blighted asshole, after what he did to you.”  
  
“I didn’t confess. I simply didn’t say anything at all. And it wasn’t to protect him. I just… couldn’t, even before the judge. I froze up. Shock, at first, and later… it was all so… shameful.”  
  
“Shameful? How? You didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
“It’s not that. It’s…” Ire was slipping into the luminous darkness “…the shame of being the sort of person… that someone would do that to.”  
  
“That doesn’t make any sense. Iriel? Iriel!”  
  
It was no use. Ire was lost in skoomaland.


	35. steam

“Tell me again why we’re doing this, because I still don’t get it. He stole a _bowl_?” Julan’s boot got stuck in the mud again, and he swore liberally as he tried to dislodge it.  
  
“A bowl, yes.” said Iriel, spells keeping him smugly clear of the swamp. Smugly, because Julan, when Ire offered to cast Water Walking on him, had insisted it was ridiculous to use magic for something as trivial as walking across wet ground, and was now too proud to back down. “I understand it has sentimental value to the Imperial Cult.”  
  
“He must have very limited horizons for a thief, this Caryarel.” muttered Julan. “Was he just starting out? Maybe he’ll go wild and take a spoon, next. Anyway, don’t you think he’d have sold the stupid bowl on, by now?”  
  
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”  
  
“Yeah, well.” Julan surveyed the mouldering cluster of huts that comprised the bedraggled little fishing village. “If I were a desperate criminal, on the run with my precious hoard of… pottery… I wouldn’t hide out in Gnaar Mok. Because then I would be in Gnaar Mok. With my bowl, yes, but still. In Gnaar Mok. Am I missing something, here?”

Later, after Julan had distracted Caryarel with tales of dying Ashlander children and Iriel had engaged in some light breaking and entering, they sat on the docks.

“Now I  _really_  don’t get it.” Julan turned the bowl over and examined the base, as if there might be diamonds hidden there. “Why didn’t he sell the thing? He took the risk of stealing it, just to carry it off to Gnaar Mok and keep it in his shack? Was he obsessed with it? Maybe we’re only getting a tiny glimpse of something, here. The tragic love story of a man and his bowl, cruelly parted by–”  
  
“I think you’re reading a little too much into this.”  
  
“That’s because you’ve never known the depths of boredom you can sink to, alone in the Grazelands. Sometimes reading too much into things was all that kept me going.”  
  
He handed the bowl back to Iriel. “To be honest, I’ve never been this far from home before. Not like you - you’ve lived in three different countries, now! So, what do you think of Morrowind? Resdayn, I mean. Morrowind is what the n'wah called it. I try to call it Resdayn, but I always forget, since everyone calls it Morrowind now. Yet another reason to hate the Empire! Taking our names, even! But anyway… do you like it here?”

Ire felt thrown off-balance by the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve had so many other problems, I never considered it.” He thought about collecting mushrooms under hazy sunsets in the Bitter Coast. Then he thought about gangs of Camonna Tong, calling him n'wah, and throwing things at him. “It hasn’t been easy.”  
  
“No wonder, if they dumped you here with nothing and nobody! Unfeeling s'wits. Not that I would expect better from the likes of them. I’m sorry your introduction to my country was so harsh.”

Iriel gave him a sidelong glance. “You’d have thrown the Imperial criminal garbage a welcoming party, would you? I thought you said Ashlanders hated foreigners.”  
  
“I… uh… well… that would certainly be the… traditional view on the matter. But I told you, I don’t hate outlanders, as long as they’re not invading us and forcing their culture on us. You shouldn’t expect all Ashlanders to have the same opinion on everything, you know! We do have minds of our own!”  
  
“So you’d like more foreigners in Morrowind, would you?”  
  
“I didn’t say  _that_ , but… I mean…” Julan was frowning, considering the question far more seriously than Ire had intended him to. “I’d like to learn more about other places. I read some stuff in a book, once, but then Mother found it, and threw it on the fire.”  
  
“Perhaps you just need a change of perspective,” Ire deadpanned. “Stop thinking of it as the Empire imposing their culture on you, and start thinking of it as them teaching you about their culture. Extremely thoroughly.”

Julan stared at Ire incredulously for a few seconds, a muscle in his eyelid twitching. Then he started laughing. “Hah! I wish I could return that lesson. But while the Empire has ‘taught’ me plenty, there are so many other places I know nothing about. Sometimes I fantasise about travelling, and seeing all the other amazing lands out there. Of course, it’ll never happen. I have duties, responsibilities. I can’t just… walk away. Find a boat, and… sail off into the horizon…” He stared dreamily out across the murky water.  
  
“Julan? Are you all right?”  
  
“…Huh? Oh, sorry. I was miles away. Hey, d’you wanna go and check out that Dwemer ruin, now?”  
  
Ire followed his gaze to the lumpen mass of rusted towers visible amongst the trees. “Don’t you think it’s a bit close to habitation to still have anything interesting left?”  
  
“How will we know till we look? Anyway, I bet you’re smarter than anyone else who’s been in there. You might find stuff they missed!”  
  
Ire snorted, but allowed himself to be flattered without further protest.

  
  
“Move!!” Julan hurled himself sideways into Iriel, who found himself thrown into the wall, but out of range of the Steam Centurion’s giant spherical fist, which came crashing down onto Julan’s shoulder. Fortunately, he was ready for it, and moved with the blow, twisting low, so that most of the force glanced off his pauldron. The construct tilted forwards, centre of gravity skewed. “Now!!” Julan yelled, driving his chitin blade at the joint of its leg.  
  
Iriel drew together the most powerful frost spell he could, and sent it crackling into the Centurion’s torso. It had no effect whatsoever, and he could tell from Julan’s grim expression that his sword was faring no better against the thing’s metal plating.  
  
Up until the Steam Centurion surprised them, it had been going rather well, even if Iriel had been proven right about the ruin being picked clean years before. Julan had got to run around gasping at moving gears and still-warm pipes, then disable a few Centurion Spiders with well-placed kicks. Ire had got to prod the deactivated spiders in an impressive manner, pretending he knew what he was doing, and, well, be proven right about the ruin. But there was no treasure to speak of, or even serious danger, and, with only one more tunnel left to explore, they had relaxed a bit. Too much, as it turned out.  
  
“It’s no use,” Ire screamed, as the Centurion’s fist whirred round in an unstoppable horizontal arc that belted Julan in the stomach and off his feet. “We have to get out of here!”  
  
Wheezing, Julan was already dragging himself upright, but not fast enough to avoid another attack. He managed to raise his shield, but the force of the blow staggered him, and produced an unpleasant splintering sound from the bonemould shield.

 _He’s not going to give up, is he? Is it because of those stupid clannfears, he thinks he has to prove himself, over and over?_   _Auri-El_ …  
  
If he had been alone, Ire would have been long gone, under cover of invisibility. As it was, he had few options, and even fewer seconds to choose one. The Centurion had caught Julan a not-dodged-far-enough glancing blow to the head, and Ire could tell from his slurred movements he was dazed, if not outright concussed. This wasn’t going to continue much longer.  
  
Ire had enough magicka for one more spell, and knew better than to trust himself with Restoration. In any case, healing would only prolong the inevitable. Which left one course of action, and he’d need to be close for it to work.  
  
The Steam Centurion was winding back for a final smash. Ire began prepping the spell in his hands, forcing the words through his mind as he dashed forwards and threw his arms round Julan, pulling him into the sphere of pink light he was focusing. As the golden arm descended, a hiss of pressurised steam escaping its joints, Ire brought both hands together, completing the spell. There was a flash, and a resounding clang, as the metal sphere hit the floor.  
  
  
Iriel didn’t want to open his eyes. He knew he’d have to, but he put it off for a few more seconds. Long enough to detect that the neck beneath his fingers contained a flickering pulse. That removed one of the worse fears, so he decided to commit to consciousness. Besides, although part of his brain was wistfully considering how long it’d been since he was last wrapped around someone like this, Julan was stirring, and this wasn’t really the time or the place.  _Or the person,_  he told himself.  
  
He sat up, and immediately found something new to worry about. He had expected Almsivi Intervention to return them to Ald'ruhn, but sunlight and running water instead of ash storms and wind ruled that out. Then he recognised the Temple courtyard. He was in Balmora again.  _Shit. We were too far south. Shitshitshitshitshit_.  
  
Julan opened his eyes and blinked a few times. He pushed himself up to sitting, his face a picture of confusion. Then he saw Ire, and, comprehension dawning, grinned sheepishly. Blood trickled down over his lip. Iriel had an overpowering desire to hit him. He settled for shouting, instead.  
  
“You idiot! You utter, fuckwitted, shit-for-brains…  _warrior!!_  What is  _wrong_ with you, do you have some kind of death wish? I can’t handle this, I can’t… don’t you  _dare_ ask me to keep…” He broke off, frustrated at his inability to express himself and the unshed tears burning behind his eyes.  _ugh, no, don’t, don’t you dare start crying, Iriel, you’re angry, stay angry, why can’t you even be angry properly?_  
  
Julan looked appropriately chastened, but made the unwise move of starting to argue anyway. “Look, I can’t help it if–”  
  
“No! Don’t start. I don’t want to hear it. Just… go away. Go into that temple behind us and see a healer. I’m going to the South Wall Cornerclub. Meet me there when you’re healed, and not before. Because in every single sense of the phrase,  _you need your bloody head examining._ ”  
  
Iriel stormed through Balmora, too furious now to care whether any Imperial spymasters were stalking him from the shadows.  
  
 _I can’t deal with this.  
  
When he comes back, I’ll tell him he has to leave._  
 _  
It’s not just the fighting, it’s everything. I’m too used to being on my own. This is too much pressure. We’re too different. I feel like he’s judging me all the time, my skooma, my sexuality, my past, my decisions… I don’t need this_.  
  
  
“Thank Stendarr you’re here, Tilde. You will not  _believe_ the fucking week I’ve had.”  
  
As Iriel dropped his bag and pulled a stool over to the bar, he didn’t see the nod that Habasi gave Sottilde, and the grimace, followed by an answering nod, from the Nord.  
  
Ire was also too preoccupied to notice the tightness in her smile as she poured him a glass of his usual shein, and had too much to say about his own troubles to realise she was quieter than she normally was.  
  
It wasn’t until he was halfway down the glass, and her eyeballs began to slide around her face, then he realised something wasn’t right. His head felt heavy. He tried to stand, and everything lurched blurrily sideways.  
  
Sottilde calling, “I’m really sorry, Ire!” was the last thing he heard.


	36. clean

The first day brought nothing but blackness.  
  
  
The second day brought a square of light from a small window in a sloping roof. Consciousness. Confusion. Panic. The inevitable nausea of withdrawal, the pounding head, the aching weakness of body. Struggling out of the narrow wooden bed despite it, and dizzily navigating the room: bare floorboards. A bucket under the bed. No door, but eventually, a metal ring in the floor, and the edges of a trapdoor, locked. Screaming, banging till his throat and fists were raw.

Voices from below.  
  
“E..er, would you mi… … … … …ny trouble?”  
  
Wooden sounds. The trapdoor creaking open. A Dunmeri man of indeterminate age with long black hair and a faded green robe, casting something before he could move, and then he  _really_ couldn’t move. Paralysis.

A mature Altmeri woman in brown netch leather armour, pale blonde hair pulled up high on her head. An icy smile. “Hello, Iriel.” A soft, lilting burr to her voice, that washed into corners of his mind he’d long since abandoned, cluttering his thoughts with perplexing debris as she continued: “I know all this must seem quite dreadful right now, but it’s for your own good. The next few days will be the worst, but if you behave yourself, there are ways to make it easier. Don’t get any silly ideas about escaping. That’s why we’ve had to neutralise your magic with a bracer, but again, if you behave, we can see about relaxing it a bit. Hurt any of my people, and that changes.”  
  
A signal to the Dunmer, who cast something blue on Ire, dispelling the paralysis and doing something else that cooled and soothed.  
  
A meaningful look from the woman. “Remember, we’re doing you a favour, here. Special instructions from Caius Cosades. You’re getting  _clean_ , Iriel.”

  
The third day brought shaking, retching, curling up in a tight ball of pain under the blankets, every glimpse of light a blade through his eyeballs. Sobbing uncontrollably, slipping in and out of consciousness, and vastly preferring the latter. A small round Breton woman coming from time to time, to bring him water, foul-tasting potions, clean buckets and sympathetic nods. “I don’t expect ya’ll be wanting food yet,” she said once, “but jus’ let me know when ya do.”  
  
  
The fourth day brought fever. Dreams, waking and sleeping. His father, silent as always, hunched angular in the corner of the room, except the room was his fishing boat, and he was casting his line into Iriel’s throat, and pulling. Wanting to beg him to stop, but there was a line in his throat, and something was being pulled out, something monstrous, and if it got out… But his father kept reeling in the line, pulling and pulling, until he woke, and vomited again.  
  
  
The fifth day brought more dreams, and an exhaustion so complete that he might as well have been paralysed. Staring vacantly at the bundled thatch above him, as tiny pink and green scribs crawled in and out of it. The Breton woman, bringing him soup, and although she had to feed it to him, he kept it down. At night, a skeleton on the bed. It was pitch dark, and he couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, and he lay awake, unable to move a muscle, for what felt like hours.  
  
  
The sixth day brought his books, on request, since although he was still aching all over, and weak as a scrib, he was awake enough to be dying of boredom.  
  
Later, it brought the blonde woman again, introducing herself as Helende. “Big Helende, they call me in the Guild. They do like their nicknames. Can’t say I’m fond of it, but at the time, they were threatening to call me ‘Little Hel’. You know. As a  _joke_. So I chose the lesser evil.” Glancing at the bed, and how much of it Ire’s legs were occupying, she opted to sit cross-legged on the floor.

“Sorry about the accommodation. Breton-made, y'know. This is usually Muriel’s room. She tells me you speak, but I’ve yet to hear it.” When Ire failed to take the hint, she continued. “Since you’ve been behaving yourself, I thought we might see about relaxing that bracer a little. Not enough to let you go casting Intervention or anything silly, but small helpful things. Cure Poison is effective at this stage, I’ve found. Would you like that?” A nod. “I’ll ask Erer to see to it.”   
  
He called to her as she was almost to the trapdoor, voice scraping like a rusty gate: “Are you from Lillandril, too?”

Helende gave a raucous laugh. “The accent’s hard to lose, isn’t it? I got out of that hole a long time ago, and don’t plan to return. You too? Who’re your parents?”  
  
“Murecano and Cinteril.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows. “Well. Dip me in fire salts and throw me to the Dremora. I remember Cinteril, all right. Is she as awful as she used to be?”  
  
“Worse,” he said, firmly, and she made an incredulous noise in her throat.  
  
“You don’t know what you’re comparing! I knew her decades ago. I’ll bet she’s mellowed, since then.”

A loosening of the tightness in his chest. Anyone who hated his mother was surely a safe person. He heard himself say, “You’d lose that bet. The last time I saw her, she called me a depraved, degenerate embarrassment.”  
  
“And are you?” she asked, cheerfully.  
  
He laughed, despite himself. “Oh, yes.”  
  
Helende’s grin widened. “Wonderful! Welcome to the club. Well. Not actually a club. Unless I start making badges! You’ll have to think of something shorter for me to write on it, though, my handwriting won’t go that small. And I’m not even  _trying_ to spell 'embarrassment’.”

He was curious. “What would your badge say, then?” She considered for a moment. “Hmm. Can I be a morally reprehensible lesbian genderhorror?”  
  
Ire smiled. “Of course, but that’s almost as long as mine. We might need bigger badges.”  
  
“Oh, hang it all, then. Labels are a pain in the rear anyway. That’s why I had to get out of Lillandril - family had me pegged as a boy, but I wasn’t having it. I have better family, now. You hurry up and get well, so you can come downstairs and meet them. We can have cake! I’ll ask Rissinia, his are the best.”  
  
  
The seventh day brought more books, this time a pile of trashy novels and light biographies begged from Muriel’s stash. All attempts to read his Dwemer research texts had failed miserably, his brain simply not possessing the attention span required. Instead, he passed the day curled up under a blanket, sucking a Cure Poison potion slowly through a straw, and working his way through the entire  _Real Barenziah_.  
  
  
The eighth day brought Sugar-Lips Habasi, smirking at the look of pure hatred and betrayal he shot her. “You have the ability to anger. This is a good sign.”   
  
Stalking across the dusty floor, her claws scraping the boards. “How are the dreams? After the third day, your body begins to release the hallucinogens it has stored, during your addiction.”  
  
Standing by the window, watching him closely. “Many people say there is no cure for a skooma addiction. This is both false, and true. False, because it is possible to remove the physical craving from your body. Habasi knows this, because Helende did this for Habasi, too, five years ago. That is why Habasi brought you to her, and why you should thank her, when it is done.

"But it is also true that there is no cure, because while Habasi is five years clean now, Habasi is still an addict, and will always be an addict. In a few more days the skooma will be gone from your body, but you will still be an addict, just as separating from a lover does not remove the desire for them. You have known the taste, and now you must carry it with you. And you must choose, every day, and this is the hard part, worse than any withdrawal. For this reason, it would not have been Habasi’s choice to force you here, like this. Caius insisted, and Habasi is not in a position to oppose Caius. He has helped us too much in our fight. But Habasi tells him, if Iriel is not ready to let go of the sugar, he will fall back as soon as he leaves. Caius should know this better than anyone. So. Does Iriel think he is ready?”  
  
A long pause. “I don’t know.”

“Caius says you cannot have been taking skooma for more than a few months. You are young, you can still change your life. It will not be easy, and you will need to be careful. Choose carefully who you have around you.” Another  pause, as she sheathed and unsheathed a claw, staring at it. “This is the real reason Habasi had to break with Tsiya, and never see her any more.”  
  
Silence, and creeping guilt. “Habasi, I… was a shit to Tsiya. I left her in a bad way, and I don’t know if she’s all right.”

A sigh. “She has not been in a good way, or all right, for a long time, and Habasi carries more blame for it than you do. When it comes to skooma, we do unpleasant things to survive. But… perhaps it is time that Habasi goes to see Tsiya again. Habasi will do what she can for her.”  
  
“Thank you. But is that… safe for you? You said…”  
  
“Do not worry about Habasi. Habasi tells you the best thing she has found about getting older. You learn the geography of your own mind. Where your limits are, where the edges are of the places you can fall. Once you travel to rock bottom enough times, you recognise the stones in the road leading there. Habasi is not a lost kitten any more, and she knows all the twisting paths in Tsiya’s garden.”  
  
“What if… what if you recognise the stones, but you can’t see another way off the road?”  
  
“Habasi only knows her own geography, not Iriel’s. You must find your own new roads. Or build them, perhaps, one step at a time. It takes age, and experience. For now, just watch the stones.”  
  



	37. optimistic

On the morning of the ninth day, there was the plink of something hard hitting glass. And another, and another, and eventually, Iriel was forced to pay attention, even though it was barely dawn. He staggered out of bed, and pushed open the tiny window, clinging to the frame for support.  
  
Julan, perched on the ridge opposite, paused in the act of throwing another pebble. “Thank Azura! I was starting to think you must be in the basement after all. Are you all right?”  
  
Ire, at a complete loss, only nodded.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to find you,” Julan said, “but these blighted thieves know how to move things quickly and quietly. I lost them after Balmora. Finally got your location out of that Nord girl at the South Wall, and then I had to actually  _get_ here. These Telvanni lands are like Sheogorath’s own country! But I made it! Don’t worry, I’m going to think of a plan, and break you out.”  
  
“Julan–”  
  
“I was going to force my way in, but there are quite a lot of them–”  
  
“Julan,  _listen_.”  
  
“–and I remembered how mad you got last time I got myself into a rough fight, so I thought I’d better ask you what you wanted me to do. Was that right?”  
  
“Yes. Yes, it was, thank you. Because listen: I don’t want breaking out. Not yet, anyway. I think… this is for the best.”  
  
“Oh. In that case, can I come  _in_? It’s starting to rain, and I’ve got a cold coming on.”  
  
“…I’ll ask.”

Later that day, Sottilde visited. Her mop of chestnut hair and wide hazel eyes rose nervously over the trapdoor first, then she was hurling herself across the floor to bury her face on the bed. “I’m soooo sorry! You have to forgive me! Habasi made me do it, you know that, right? I’ve felt like dried-up rat shit ever since. You gotta say you forgive me! I’m not getting up til you do, and it better be soon, because, no offence, this blanket smells fuckin’ awful.”

He couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to torment her properly, so he gave up, and hugged her instead. “I forgive you. But from now on, you’re tasting all the wine first.”  
  
She hugged him back, tighter.  "Oh no, however will I cope with such a cruel demand? …Gods, Ire, you’re barely even a skeleton.“  
  
"I’ve been on a starvation diet especially for you, love.”  
  
“Bastard. I’ve been worried about you! D’you reckon you’re going to be… all right?”  
  
He shrugged. “Who knows? I’ll try, though. And thank you. I’m glad you came.”

She sat on the end of the bed, fighting his feet for space. “He’s downstairs, you know.”  
  
“Who is?” he replied, diffidently.  
  
“Your boyfriend. Arguing with Fandus about Imperial architecture. He’s cute, well done! What about Kaye, though? You’re not cheating on him, are you?”  
  
“Oh Tilde, bless your optimistic little heart for actually thinking I might have two boyfriends instead of none.”  
  
“Whaaat? But he sounded so adorably worried about you when he threatened to run me through unless I told him where they were hiding you.”  
  
Ire rolled his eyes. “Death threats are like flirtation to Nords, aren’t they? Well, you can have him, if you want him.”  
  
“You’re really, truly, honestly not interested?”  
  
He hesitated slightly too long, but, seeing her expression, replied before she could interject: “ _No_ , firstly because I don’t waste my time chasing straight boys, and secondly because he’s an  _idiot_.”  
  
“But you like idiots!” she scoffed. “That’s how you get to feel superior to everyone! It’s why we’re friends! Can you really imagine dating someone smarter than you? You’d hate every minute of it.”  
  
He wanted to contradict her, but couldn’t quite find the words.  
  
“Anyway,” she added, “he can’t be all that dim. He’s been holding his own against Fandus for half an hour, now, despite the fact he’s had three drinks, clearly doesn’t know the first thing about architecture, and is making it up as he goes along. He’s driving Fandus up the wall. It’s great.”  
    
“Well, he’s all yours,” said Ire firmly. “Careful, he might have a muscle or two.”   
  
She grinned. “Ah, but elves carry it differently, even the fighters.” She illustrated her point with enthusiastic hand motions. “Less bulky, more… lithe. Mmmm… ellllllvvves.”  
  
He sighed, theatrically. “I refuse to sanction your appalling fetish.”  
  
“That’s OK, maybe he’ll sanction it. Maybe  _he’s_  always had a secret yearning for a rough barmaid from Riften!”  
  
Iriel faked outrage. “I’m going downstairs right now to tell him never to drink  _anything_ you offer him.”  
  
She held onto his legs. “Nooooo, don’t you dare tell him about that! It wasn’t my fault!” She let go, and looked at him more seriously. “You oughtta come downstairs, though. Helende says she asked you ages ago. Why are you still hiding up here?”  
  
He leaned back against the headboard, suddenly deflated. “Why do you think?”  
  
“They’re all really nice people, Ire.”  
  
He frowned. “Stop it with that sympathetic, pitying face. That’s what I’m afraid  _they’re_  going to do.”  
  
He turned away from her, and stared out of the window. “I know, I’m hopeless, you don’t have to tell me. So just leave me alone now, OK?”  
  
  
Left to himself again as the light slowly faded outside, Ire listened to the voices below, the familiar mingling with the unknown.  
  
“…o, I couldn’t believe it either! A complete set-up. So he’s in the lock-up at Pelagiad, and now Habasi’s… What do you say instead of ‘having kittens’, for a Khajiit? Having babies? That can’t be right. Anyway, she asked me if I could spare some of my people, but…”  
  
“…iner’s daughter lost her pearl down in the mine! Oh, the kwama miner’s daughter lost her pearl down in the mine. The kwama miner’s daughter lost her pearl down in the mine, and she bid me fetch it baaaaack…”  
  
“…etely ridiculous! Circular standing towers have been a staple of many different architectural traditions for  _literally millennia_. The fact they are uncommon in native Dunmeri settlements does not mean that their incorporation into Imperial colonies on Vvardenfell is some kind of  _patriarchal phallic statement_ , and it  _certainly_ does not imply the the Emperor is compensating for something!”  
  
“…ere’s Celegorn and Bodu tonight? Not  _still_ working the Tel Aruhn job, are they?”  
  
“…dark and awful deep! I said, sera, yonder mine is awful dark and awful deep. Sera, yonder mine is awful dark and awful deep, and I fear I’d not returrrrrrrn…”  
  
“…didn’t say that! Lithe, I said. No, ya daft scuttlehead, it’s a compliment! See, the thing I hate about Nord guys is…”  
  
“…and all the little scribs sing shalalalala, shalalalala, shalalalala…”  
  


Iriel lay on his bed and watched the stars crawl across his small square of sky. The voices were dying down, and he heard people starting to leave, or preparing for sleep. The usual nightly scraping and clattering of Muriel putting the chairs on the tables, and washing out the mugs, then her footsteps fading away.  
  
Just as he was balancing on the edge of sleep, he heard hushed voices on the floor below, and a low, bubbling laugh he recognised.  _Sottilde must be staying here tonight, instead of trying to get back to Balmora._  
  
A muffled crash, another familiar voice cursing, more giggling. Silence for a while. Then small sounds, mostly suppressed, but unmistakable in tone. A small glass thing smashing. A gasp, melting into something else.  _Oh no. Please, no. She didn’t, he wouldn’t… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh._  
  
As the sounds became steadily less suppressed, Ire pulled the pillow over his head, torn between horrified mortification, and the even less pleasant suspicion that he was getting exactly the punishment he deserved.


	38. charm

Iriel sat at the upstairs bar, sipping bittergreen tea and adjusting to a new space. Although he gathered from the bulbous and twisted mushroom towers outside the window that this was Sadrith Mora, he was in an incongruously Breton-style wood-beamed cornerclub, known to all as “Dirty Muriel’s”.  
  
It was true that, while no doubt warm and inviting by candlelight, the bright morning sun was currently doing a good job of highlighting every stain and spill. Muriel, however, was bustling about with a mop, as if determined to emphasise that the nickname did  _not_ refer to her establishment’s physical cleanliness. She turned the corner of the bar, and tutted at a broken bottle on the floor. “Who did that? It wasn’t in that state when I went to bed!”

Iriel recalled the smashing sound from the previous night, and stared at the bar-top in dismay. Careful to avoid touching anything else, he picked up his mug, and moved to the corner table instead.  
  
He knew that the seething rage and betrayal he felt was completely and utterly irrational. He knew he had no reason to be jealous, since he wasn’t pursuing either of them. He knew that his own emotional and physical isolation was entirely self-inflicted, and shouldn’t prevent others from enjoying themselves. All this knowledge only had the effect of making him angry with himself, as well as with his friends.  
  
Sottilde had at least had the decency to be gone by first light. Julan was unaccounted for, until he came up the stairs, rubbing his hair with a towel.  
“Have you seen the basement?” he demanded of Iriel, eyes wide. “They’ve got a bath! With hot water!”  
  
“O’ course I do,” Muriel said, sweeping up glass fragments. “I’m from High Rock. I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t keep m’necessaries.”

Julan sat down opposite Ire. “There’s food downstairs. Can I get you anything?”   
  
Ire shook his head.  
  
“How’re you feeling?” the Dunmer continued. “I gather they’ve been… what do you call it?… un-addicting you? That’s great! Good thing I didn’t try to break you out, but I had no idea what was going on, until Sottilde filled me in."  _I thought it was the other way arouSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP_

Forcing himself into speech to stave off mental images, Iriel said, "I’m surprised you’re not more hung over.”  
  
Julan looked puzzled. “Why? I wasn’t all that drunk.” _…oh_. “By the way, Big Helende wants to talk to you. She’s downstairs.”  
  
Keen to be somewhere else, Iriel went.  
  


Helende was sorting through lockpicks at a table, while the Dunmer mage, Erer Darothril, reclined on a basket chair in the background, smoking a kreshweed pipe. Iriel wondered what he did with the Guild. He didn’t look like much, in fact he appeared older, and his robe even more worn than the last time Ire had seen him. Everyone was scrupulously polite to him, though, including Helende, although the mage always made a point of deferring to her authority.  
  
Now, seeing Iriel come in, he got up to leave. Helende held up a hand. “No need to go, Erer. You don’t mind him staying, do you, Ire?”  
  
Iriel shrugged. “If you want.”

She raised an eyebrow, but took out a key. “Your wrist, please.” The bracer clicked open.  
  
“Thanks a lot,” he muttered. “It was  _last_ night that I needed the Silence spell, but never mind what I want.”  
  
She placed the bracer on the table, and looked at him. “All right,” she said. “What’s the matter?”  
  
He rubbed his wrist, avoiding her gaze. “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”   
  
Helende focused the look into a glare, and Ire was forced to make eye contact. “How old are you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You heard me.”

He had to think about it. His birthday had come and gone several weeks ago, somewhere underneath all the skooma. He hadn’t celebrated. “…Twenty-four.”   
  
“There,” she said. “Some would call that young, especially for our people. I say you’re an adult, and you don’t need to be giving me that shrugging, monosyllabic teenager routine. Have you eaten today?” He shook his head, and she pointed to the kitchen. “Bread and scrib jelly are on the side. And don’t give me that look. If you don’t want me mothering you, stop requiring mothering.”

He came back, with a plate, and sat down. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not having the best day.”  
  
“Yeeeeees,” she said, pointedly. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. You’ve been through a lot, from what you’ve told me, and I’ll bet there are things you  _haven’t_  told me, on top of that. Which is fine, obviously. What I’m getting at is that it sounds like you’ve been using skooma to cope with your problems. And I want to know what you’re going to do instead. Because if you don’t have a plan, you’ll end up right back on the sugar, the next  _really_ bad day you get.”  
  
He hesitated, but decided to be honest with her. “That’s what I’m worried about, too,” he said, quietly. “As long as I have my spells, I can usually handle most of it, but…”  
  
“Spells?”  
  
“Invisibility. Silence. Chameleon. Illusion spells.” He was almost whispering, now. “They help with the numb… and the fear… but they can’t keep out of the Pit. I needed the skooma for that.”  
  
Helende pursed her lips. “You’ve lost me,” she said.  
  
Ire haltingly tried to explain the pathways of his brain. He could feel Erer Darothril’s red eyes fixed on him, and when he had finished, it was the Dunmer who spoke next. “You don’t know Charm?”  
  
Iriel visibly stiffened. “No,” he said coldly. “I don’t. And even if I did, I don’t see how it would be applicable.”

Ire was unpleasantly reminded of the argument he and Sottilde had had back at the South Wall, the night he had told her about Kaye, who was perfect, and how he, Iriel, being decidedly imperfect, did not stand a chance with him.  
  
“You’ve got all those green sparkly illusion spells,” she had said. “I thought Charm was an illusion spell. Why don’t you just go swooosh, poof, fingerwavey,” (she demonstrated the fingerwaving part) “and then he’ll think you’re a golden god of sex! Someone cast one of ‘em on me last week. I’d never met the guy before, but suddenly I was sure he was my best friend in the whole world! You hit your boy Kaye with one o’ those, and before you can even wink, you’ll be riding his cock all the way to–”

“It doesn’t WORK like that!” Ire had been infuriated with her. “You can’t _make_  someone attracted to you, if they’re not! And… and even if you could, if you acted on it, it’d be rape! And, look, how do you feel about that guy who Charmed you, now?”  
  
Her face had darkened. “I’m going to rip his fucking nipples off! He talked me into giving him my code book, and now Habasi’s pissed at me! I ever see his filthy little neck again, I’m gonna–” Her hands had clenched involuntarily as Ire waved her into silence.  
  
“See! See! It doesn’t last, and when it wears off, you hate whoever cast it even more than before! You can’t manipulate people like that, especially not people you want to like you properly, asyourself. I hate it. It’s the sort of spell that gives illusion magic a bad name, and I want no part of it.”  
  
He had straightened his spine haughtily, raised his wineglass, and taken a drink, somewhat spoiling the self-righteous effect by misjudging the angle and spilling wine down his chin. _  
_

_My point stands, though. I’m not that sort of person. That’s definitely more Tilde’s style - I’m sure she’d have no hesitation adding coercive spells to her arsenal of alcohol, sleeping potions and leaning across tables with half her shirt buttons undUGH stoppit, Ire, stoppit, she’s your friend and you’re being an asshole again, ugh._

Erer Darothril was looking at him oddly, probably due to the succession of disgusted and angry faces he was making. “I’m not interested in that sort of magic,” Ire said. “It’s unethical and counter-productive.”  
  
The mage smiled, disingenuously. “And a fireball isn’t? Surely, context is everything.”  
  
Iriel snorted. “There’s always an excuse, isn’t there?”  
  
 "Isn’t there?“ repeated Darothril, with a shrug.  
  
Ire had the strong suspicion he was being mocked, and he wasn’t in the mood. "Do you actually have anything valuable to contribute,” he said, “or are you just trying to argue with me for the sake of it? Because if so, be quiet. I know illusion magic. I know what I’m talking about, and I can’t stand it when other mages… insist on… What?”

Helende had covered her eyes with her hand, and was shaking with silent laughter. Darothril continued to wear the same, impassive, infuriating smile. Ire looked back and forth between them with a sinking feeling. “This is going to go down in my book of eternally embarrassing regrets, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes,” Helende spluttered. “As the time you told the greatest illusion mage in all of Vvardenfell to shut up, because you  _knew_ –”  
  
“Oh gods.” Iriel could have slid under the table. “Do you think if I begged nicely, he could make me invisible for ever and ever?”

Darothril blew a smoke-ring. “Surely permanent Silence would be more appropriate,” he cackled. “But why don’t we skip straight to the part where we can laugh about it. You Altmer are far too long lived for eternal regrets to be a healthy proposition. And then, perhaps you would like to listen to my small suggestion.”  
  
Ire, suitably abashed, nodded, and the Dunmer continued. “When I suggested you try Charm spells, I didn’t say you should cast them on anyone else. I recommend that you cast them on yourself.”  
  
Iriel was stunned. “But… what would that even… do?”

Darothril still couldn’t stop smirking. “What! But I thought you _knew_  illusion magic!”  
  
Ire sighed. “Would it help if I formally apologised for saying that, if it meant you stopped bringing it up? Because I’m sorry. It was a complete lie. I’m very good at casting certain illusion spells, to the extent that sometimes I don’t even notice I’m doing it. But I’ve never studied any actual _theory_  of illusion magic. Why would Charm spells help me?”

“Because they might not work the way you think they do. All illusion spells involve changing perceptions. This is why people sneer at illusion magic, of course, comparing it unfavourably with the School of Alteration, which alters physical properties. And yet our perceptions are the very first point of contact that any of us has with the world. Change those, and you change everything. This is never more true, or more powerful, than when we are changing _our own_  perceptions. Forget about controlling others. All magic begins with controlling the self. Illusion magic turns this into a fine art.

"Illusion can work on two levels: external and internal. Physical sense perceptions are the external, of course. Altering visual and aural input and output. You know these spells already, I think. Light, Sound, Blindness, Chameleon, Silence. But these are not the only things that affect us, are they? Illusion can also allow us control over our internal perceptions of the world, and of ourselves. Our emotions. Take Charm, for example. Let’s say you cast a Charm spell on a stranger. What do you think it will do?”  
  
“I always assumed it made the caster more appealing. More charismatic, more attractive.”  
  
 "But you didn’t cast the spell on yourself, you cast it onsomeone else. How, then, can it change your appearance? Charm is an internal spell, not an external one, like Invisibility. It does not affect physical perceptions, but emotions. If you cast a Charm spell on a stranger, you yourself will not become more appealing, but rather, he will enter into a frame of mind which makes  _everything_ more appealing to him. And, as a result, he is more likely to feel benevolent towards you.“  
  
"You’re saying it’s a… good mood spell?”  
  
“Yes, if you like.”  
  
“I still think it’s manipulative.”  
  
 "Which is why I told you to cast it on yourself.“  
  
 "Oh.  _Ohhhh_ …”  
  
“Don’t go thinking it’ll be a panacea for your problems. It won’t. It will work for the duration of the effect, and then you’re liable to feel worse than before. Nevertheless, it can be an invaluable tool. It can buy you time. It can give you the freedom of mind to complete a necessary task. It is, in many ways, the reverse of Paralyze. And while addiction and abuse are possible, I consider it a lot safer and cheaper than skooma. Now. With your permission, I will demonstrate.”  
  
Darothril taught Iriel two more spells, in addition to Charm. They were, he said, two sides of the same coin, or perhaps two ends of the same see-saw was a better metaphor. Rally and Calm, designed to push the mind towards either action or inaction, depending on which was required. “Calm, in particular, is a more practical solution to a social phobia than Invisibility, don’t you think?” he said. Ire, attached to his current methods, was less sure, but he memorised the spells anyway.

“Use them as necessary,” Darothril advised, “but I recommend moderation. The aim is to take control of the emotional extremes that are preventing you from functioning normally. The aim is not to reduce your existence to a flat, neutral plane, devoid of either highs or lows. However, if you do come to believe that you perform your best self when under a constant, low-level effect of some kind…” He spread his hand before Iriel, showing two enchanted rings, one with a green stone, and one a band of engraved silver. “Such things are expensive, but possible. Come back and talk to me if you have any problems or questions.”  
  
Afterwards, Erer returned to his pipe, and Helende, who had been attending to other business during the magical instruction, sat down opposite Iriel again.   
  
“We’re almost done,” she said. “I’m sure you want to get out of here, and with the bracer removed, I can’t stop you. I hope, though, that you’ve considered your plan of action. Do you have one?”

Ire paused, a suspicious expression overtaking his face. “You mean you’re not turning me over to Caius Cosades? I thought this whole thing was his idea.”  
  
“Keep your voice down. Only the top Guild brass know about his identity, and only because we have an arrangement. So. Yes, he called in a favour with us to get you clean, but he’s no fool. He may have eyes everywhere, but he’s got no use for an agent he has to keep caged or hunt down every five minutes. He wants to speak to you in Balmora, and I strongly recommend you go.”  
  
“What happens if I don’t?”  
  
“He didn’t say, but do you really want to spend all your time looking over your shoulder? In my opinion, it’s a good job offer, and you should take it. From what little he told me, it’s mostly research, and nothing you can’t handle. Beats me why he’s gone to so much trouble over you, but he’s full of mysteries, that one. So. Go and see Caius. He’s reliable, he pays well, and it’ll keep you occupied. If that’s not enough, you’re in the Guild, and that means I also have jobs for you, if you want them. Do you have somewhere to live?”  
  
“Not as such, no.”  
  
“Well, you do now. Here. As I said, you’re Guild, and in this house, that means family. Most of the boys sleep in the basement, but you might actually persuade Muriel to let you keep the attic. I understand she’s got rather attached to sleeping in the boiler room. Means she can stoke the furnace in the middle of the night. That’s the kind of thing she’s into, apparently.”  
  
Helende tapped her teeth with a lockpick. “What else…? Oh yes, your Ashlander friend. I spoke to him earlier, told him he’s welcome, as long as he behaves. It’d be a very good idea for you to have someone around to keep you company, and he seems keen enough. Said something about the two of you poking about Dwemer ruins? Fine. Keep yourself busy, that’s the ticket.”


	39. hair

The basement had a mirror, as well as a bath. Iriel stared at his reflection in the dim light, trying to avoid deep (and deeply clichéd, he felt) questions about who he  _was_ , you know, _really_ , and focus on more immediate concerns. Such as which side to part his hair on, and how in Mara’s name the dark circles under his eyes could be remedied.  
 _  
If I decide which eye looks worse, I can part my hair so that it falls over it. Perhaps I should just comb the lot over my entire face. At least it’s finally long enough_.

The previous evening had, following Helende’s strict instructions to her kitchen minions, brought cake, which served to mediate a few gentle, low-key introductions. Rissinia was the Guild savant, handling legal issues and accounts. A quiet, serious Redguard, he bowed to Iriel and assured him he looked forward to working with him. Fandus was a scout, a hot-tempered Imperial, who had already become the best of enemies with Julan, although he denied that this prejudiced him against Ire. Provided Ire would back him up about the glory of the Imperial City and the fundamental abnormality of living in a mushroom.

Ire had nodded, smiled, and eaten the cake, which was excellent, despite the difficulty of assembling such things from Morrowind ingredients. It had comberries in it. Then, already exhausted by the social effort, he had gone to bed, leaving Julan and Fandus to launch into “Ancestor Worship: Sacred and Moving Expression of Familial Devotion or Hideous, Unnatural Barbarism That’s Basically Just Necromancy Under A Prettier Name.”  
  
Twelve hours later, he woke from bizarre and vividly erotic dreams about Dwemer automata ( _oh great, that’s all I need, a Steam Centurion fetish, thanks a lot, brain_ ) feeling ravenously hungry, and more alive than he had done in weeks. It was as if his entire body had decided to finally drag itself out of its sugar-frosted torpor and rejoin the fight for survival.

He stared at himself in the mirror again. Disconcertingly skeletal, yes. But clean, in every sense, and surprising himself with his current determination to unfuck his life. He hadn’t been at all sure, during the last ten days, whether he could really do it.  
  
Skooma hadn’t just been a coping mechanism in terms of its emotional effects. It had been a focus for his existence at a time when he didn’t have many others. The pursuit and consumption of it had given his days structure, and veiled his lapses in moral judgement with a comforting cloud of mitigating circumstance and perceived necessity. There would be no more excuses, now.  
  
Breaking his earlier resolution, he met his own gaze, leaning so close to the mirror that his nose touched the glass.  _I know I’m not a strong person. Or a particularly good one. But I–_

“You look fine, hurry up.” said Julan, behind him, and Ire jumped, almost head-butting the mirror.  
  
“I don’t know what your definition of  _fine_ is,” he grumbled, “but it’s not mine.”  
  
“Oh, come on. You’ve got that whole ‘mysterious mage who has seen terrible things no mere mortal should witness’ look going on.”  
  
Ire thought about some of the terrible things he had witnessed lately, dragged from the depths of his subconscious… and from his stomach at three in the morning. “Accurate,” he said.  
  
“Well, then.” Julan was pulling at his hair in the mirror. “Girls love that kind of thing. Boys, too. Probably. For all I know.”  
  
“What about charming shrine sergeants with hands like sunrise over the sea and smiles like warm spiced wine?” whispered Iriel to his reflection, but Julan wasn’t listening.  
  
“D'you think I should shave my head?” he asked, pushing the uneven front sections back from his forehead, and squinting at himself sideways. “Or maybe just shave the sides. I dunno, what do you think?”  
  
Ire had opinions on many topics, but other people’s hair wasn’t one of them. “Um… If you want to?” he hazarded. “It’d certainly be… different.”  
  
“Yeah… The trouble with shaving it, is I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, so it’d probably just look stupid. My sacred mission means I should be trying to avoid suspicion, but I still wish I looked more Velothi, more like an Ashlander. I’m not ashamed of my culture, and I don’t want to hide it!”  
  
“I don’t know how Ashlanders are supposed to look,” Ire admitted. “I take it tattoos and piercings are popular? Why don’t you have any, then, if you’re so keen to be seen as one?”  
  
Julan was frowning. “Among my people, body markings show your status within the tribe. Your age, rank, if you’re married, if you have sons, stuff like that. Me, I have no status. I never even went through the initiation rituals, when most boys get their first marks. Outcast, remember?”  
  
Iriel nodded, slightly embarrassed. “You could do it for yourself, if you wanted to, surely?” he asked.  
  
Julan looked confused. “What would be the point? What meaning would it have, then?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Ire said. “Do they need to have a meaning? Can’t they just be aesthetic?”  
  
“Aesthetic?”  
  
“For how they look.”  
  
Julan considered for a moment, then shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the same. Receiving an earring or a tattoo from an elder, a parent… it’s a mark of shared respect and trust, of family and belonging. It’s not just sticking holes in yourself.”

Iriel, with more bitterness creeping into his voice than he perhaps intended, said, “You’re really still concerned with obtaining the validation of people who cast you out?”  
  
“Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

Valuing his own privacy, Ire was not normally one to ask blunt personal questions. However, he considered that after explaining his criminal past, he was owed at least one. He was also still feeling combative towards Julan due to a lot of unspilled resentment he was hoping would go away, if he ignored it long enough. It hadn’t, yet. “What  _did_ you do to get made outcast?” he asked.  
  
Julan didn’t appear bothered by the question. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “It all happened before I was born. Mother got on the wrong side of tribal politics, and got pushed out to keep the peace.”  
  
Ire couldn’t contain his incredulity. “So, you’ve never even been part of this tribe, they rejected you literally from birth, but you still care about what they think of you, and want to wear their marks? That’s ridiculous.”  
  
Julan glowered, and turned away from the mirror. “Maybe it is. I don’t care. They’re still my people. I don’t expect you to understand.”  
  
“Fine,” said Ire. “Have it your way. But being an outcast is still no excuse for letting your mother cut your hair.”  
  
There was a stony silence from the Ashlander, until: “Are we leaving, or not?” Julan picked up his bag, and made for the stairs. “We have much more important things to do than talk about  _hair_.”


	40. initiation

Iriel was outside. More precisely, he was walking through Sadrith Mora. Everything felt very big, and very far away, in comparison to the close, comforting walls of the cornerclub. But he was all right. He was breathing. He could do this. He could make it all the way to the docks without casting any illusion spells. Even though there were  _people_ out here, and occasionally, they  _looked_ in his direction. With their  _eyes_.

In all honesty, most of them weren’t even looking at him, they were looking at Julan, who was wearing the most obviously-Ashlander things he owned, and was marching through town with head held high, while Ire skulked along behind him. Every time someone aimed him a dirty look, or muttered an insult, Julan would return fire with a word or gesture, and his grin would get broader.  
  
“See? They can tell!” he said to Iriel. “I don’t need tattoos and stuff for people to know what I am.”  
  
“I don’t understand how this is an advantage,” Ire said, clenching his fists to prevent himself casting Chameleon. “What does it matter? Why invite trouble?”  
  
“I’m not inviting anything. I’m just walking. Any of these fetchers  _wants_ trouble,” he smirked, “they can  _bring_ it.”  
  
Ire tried to focus on his breathing. “Please, can we just get to the docks?”

“EBONHEART?” Julan’s good mood had been ruined instantly. “I thought we were going to go and find another Dwemer ruin, or see about that job of yours in Balmora, or work for the Guild, or…”  
  
He slumped against the rail of the boat, and miserably watched the iridescent mushroom caps of Sadrith Mora recede into the mist. “Or anything but go to Ebonheart. I passed through there on my way here from Balmora, and it made me want to  _die_. It’s this huge, Imperial boil, stuck to the underside of Vvardenfell, and I’d rather throw myself into the sea, than witness that desecration of my homeland again.”  
  
“Go on, then,” said Ire. “Nobody asked you to come. Whatever Helende may have guilted you into, I really don’t need looking after.”  
  
“She didn’t guilt me into anything!” protested Julan. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”   
  
Iriel looked unconvinced, but nodded briefly. “Then you’ll just have to put up with Ebonheart for a while.” he said, glancing into his bag yet again to check that the precious limeware bowl hadn’t been chipped in transit. “I have very important business here.”  
  
  
“Kaye? I’m sorry, but he’s not here right now,” said the fresh-faced initiate who greeted them at the chapel door. “He always visits the sick on Morndas, but he should be back in a couple of hours. Perhaps you’d like to wait somewhere in quiet contemplation?”  
  
Iriel could have been up for that, provided no one tried to dictate the content of his meditations, but a short distance away, another acolyte was making the terrible mistake of trying to give Julan a leaflet. Ire did not think quiet contemplation was going to be on the agenda.  
  
“Um… is there anything you need help with?” he asked. “Perhaps…  _outside_ the chapels?”  
  
A loud Imperial voice boomed at him from across the room. “Aha! We have a volunteer, by Zenithar!” Ire flinched at the word “volunteer”, but there was no escape, the burly man in the elaborate shirt was already upon him. “I am Iulus Truptor. I manage the volunteer almoners for our cult. Are you ready to accept a fund raising project for us?”  
  
Iriel glanced sideways, to where Julan was shredding the leaflet in front of the terrified initiate’s nose. “Yes! Anything! Just tell me quickly, so I can get out of here and… and serve the Nine!”  
  
“You didn’t have to kick me like that,” Julan protested, as Iriel dragged him outside. “I wasn’t  _really_ going to make him eat the leaflet. Anyway, what have you got us into now?”  
  
Ire gave him a despairing look. “I said we’d go to the Skyrim Mission and ask the Nords for alms for the poor.”  
  
“You WHAT?!”  
  
“I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done it, but I had to get you out of there, and now I’ve agreed to it, but I can’t go and ask strangers for money, I just  _can’t!_ ” Ire gazed beseechingly at Julan. “You’re so much better at talking to people than I am. Please can you do it? Please?”  
  
“Are you seriously asking ME to raise money for the IMPERIAL CULT?”  
  
“Not for the Cult! For the poor!”  
  
“Yeah, but… from Nords? I’m not going to Nords, and begging them for money! I have my pride!”  
  
“Oh, you don’t like Nords, now? Last I heard, you were  _deeply into_ certain aspects of Nordic culture.”  
  
“What are you  _talking_ about?”  
  
“…Never mind.” Iriel took out his coin-purse and started counting the contents. “Perhaps I should give them my own money, and say I collected it.”  
  
Julan looked scandalised. “Oh, no you don’t! I’d rather we fleeced the damn Nords for money, if you’re going to insist on giving it the Cult anyway. Just tell me - why in Oblivion are you licking the feet of these Imperial Cult scuttleheads? I can’t stand them, with their charity, and their false humility, trying to make me feel bad about hating the Empire. You don’t really  _believe_ in all that guarshit of theirs, do you?”  
  
“No! What kind of fool do you take me for? I just have a stupid, pointless crush on one of the acolytes. Help me? Please?”  
  
“I… oh, fine. At least that makes more sense than worshipping the Nine Divines.”  
  
  
The morning was passed tortuously for all involved, except the Nords, who considered the entertainment value of the elven double-act to be well worth the price of admission.  
  
  
“Well? Is he in there?” Iriel endlessly knotted and unknotted his fingers as Julan came back from his scouting mission at the chapel door.  
  
“There’s a Redguard,” Julan said dubiously, “but he didn’t really fit your description. I’m not sure any mortal could have fitted  _your_ description, though. Anyway, the one I saw had a moustache, and his hair was in lots of little twisted bits.”  
  
“That’s him!” Ire’s eyes lit up. “Do I look all right?”  
  
“For the thousandth time, you look fine. Maybe you’d prefer me to go up to him, whisper ‘my friend likes you!’ into his ear, then run away?”  
  
“I would prefer,” Iriel pleaded, “for you to not embarrass me. No getting into arguments. No scaring the novices. No loud comments about the Emperor. Are you sure you don’t want to wait out here?”  
  
“And miss you making a fool of yourself?”  
  
Ire glared at him. “Not. Funny. If you’re just going to add to my stress levels, then please save yourself the trouble and go throw yourself into the harbour, like you said you would, if we stayed in Ebonheart any longer.”  
  
“Hey, don’t forget I got you the stupid money from the stupid Nords! Even if it only worked because they all thought an Ashlander collecting for the Imperial Cult was such a hilarious novelty.”  
  
“If you were really trying to help, you would have collected for the Argonian Mission, too.”  
  
“Look,” Julan said heatedly, “tricking Nords out of their drinking money is one thing. Taking money from the Argonians is quite another. You told me yourself, they help slaves escape!”  
  
“Yes, all right.” Ire muttered. “Stop complaining I paid for that one myself, then.”  
  
Julan looked on the brink of losing his temper, but held himself back at the last minute, folding his arms and looking away. “Go on then. Take the damn bowl back, if you’re going to. I’ll be in the Six Fishes. Wouldn’t want to embarrass you in front of your Redguard.”  
  
Kaye’s smile hooked Iriel the moment he walked through the door, and reeled him blissfully across the room. Choosing to ignore the possibility that Kaye’s joy was caused primarily by the limeware bowl in his hands, Ire returned the greeting with an extremely genuine smile of his own. He even remained conscious as Kaye’s hands gently brushed his as the bowl was passed over.  
  
“So you found Caryarel? And recovered our bowl? Well done! Here. Let me give you something to cover your expenses.” Ire made protesting noises, as Kaye reached for his coin-purse.  
  
“Did you have any trouble with Caryarel?” Kaye asked, carrying the bowl down the stone stairs to the lower chambers of the chapel. “I hope you didn’t have to resort to violence.”  
  
“Of course not,” said Ire, following close at heel. “Everything was perfectly civilised, I assure you.”  
  
“Glad to hear it.” Kaye placed the bowl reverently into a chest, and turned to face Iriel. “I know missions can get messy, at times, despite all our best intentions. I want you to know that as head of the shrine sergeants, I trust your judgement. It’s your call, and whatever happens, I’ll back you up. But I’m pleased that you handled things peacefully. I think that’s more in the spirit of the teaching of the Nine. Even a bad life should never be cheap.”  
  
He grinned, a little sheepishly. “End of sermon. In all seriousness, though, I appreciate a sense of restraint and judgement. Don’t see it that often in Morrowind. I think you and I will get along just fine. Here. I’d like you to have something.”  
  
He reached into the chest, and drew out a small enchanted amulet, white ceramic, inlaid with silver. “You’ve shown yourself to be a loyal member of the Imperial Cult. I hope this small gift will make your labours a little easier.”  
  
He held it in both hands, and motioned Ire closer. Fully aware that he was blushing, and not even slightly caring, Iriel bent his neck, allowing Kaye to fasten the amulet around it.  
  
At the moment when Kaye’s fingers touched the nape of his neck, he looked up, their eyes met, and for an electric moment, he thought he might be pulled into a kiss. But Kaye only smiled, and said “Congratulations, Iriel. I’m honoured to be able to promote you to Initiate.”  
  



	41. guardian

“Chk chk chk!” The caravaner reached forward with a hooked cane and did something highly invasive to the silt strider’s exposed tendons. The entire chitinous assemblage rearranged its legs, and swung north towards the Odai river.  
  
Iriel wondered vaguely if the giant insect really understood the clicking noises the old Dunmer was making, or if it was merely customary. Perhaps it was to reassure the passengers. He _did_  find it reassuring. Certainly more reassuring than Julan’s terrifying habit of climbing up out of the passenger hollow and standing on the edge, holding onto the carapace with one hand as he watched the horizon. Ire had begged him to stop, which he had taken as an insult to his agility, and had barely come down since they left the strider-port at Vivec.

In a way, Ire was relieved, since it meant they wouldn’t argue. It wasn’t just about bug-riding etiquette. They had been sniping at each other all day. The warm fuzzy glow enveloping Iriel as he left the Ebonheart chapel had only lasted so long. About as long as it took to dig the other elf out of the tavern and explain about the new tasks he had, in his rose-tinted haze of charitability, agreed to carry out for the Imperial Cult. Julan had been cautiously intrigued by the haunted house to investigate in Caldera, but the news that Ire had got roped into yet more donation-can shaking in Ald'ruhn had him scowling and muttering curses under his breath.

It infuriated Iriel, principally because it increased his suspicion that someone, most likely Helende, was bribing Julan to monitor him, and make sure he stayed off the sugar. Why else would the Ashlander have stuck around for so long? Ire couldn’t stand the constant feeling of being scrutinised, his willpower doubted.

He must’ve dozed off, because Julan was shaking him. “Hey, we’re in Balmora. It’s late, though, we should find somewhere to spend the night. D’you want to try the South Wall?”  
  
“No!” Ire said, rather more sharply than was strictly necessary. _I cannot deal with seeing Sottilde’s smug face yet, and definitely not with him there too._  
  
“OK,” Julan said in placating tones, “the Eight Plates, then?”

_Mara’s arse, but the only thing worse than when he’s complaining is when he’s trying to be nice. Condescending to me like I’m a fucking child. Well. Let’s see exactly how much he’s willing to put up with before he finally leaves me alone._

“We’re not stopping,” he said. “Kaye told me this haunting is an urgent job, so we’re getting to Caldera as soon as possible. That means walking, and it means startingnow.”  
  
“Are you mad?!”  
  
Iriel glared at him, the flickering torchlight creating dancing flames in his amber eyes. “So I’ve been told,” he said. “What do _you_  think?”  
  
  


The walk to Caldera was dark, damp, miserable, and conducted largely in silence. As dawn broke, they entered a small walled town of Imperial thatched buildings, clustered around a stone keep.  
  
Julan took one look at it and groaned. “Sheogorath, not more Imperial colonies. No wonder it’s haunted! I think the real question is why all the ghosts of all the Dunmer ancestors who ever lived aren’t hauntingall the Imperial invaders’ houses, every hour of every day! That’s the real question.” Iriel ignored him.

A light was burning inside the tavern, but otherwise the town was still sleeping, the cobbled streets shrouded in a thin mist. Then as Ire stood, shivering slightly, he heard footsteps, and an Altmer man together with two Dunmer entered the town square. The Altmer nodded to Iriel, in what he presumed was a show of racial acknowledgement. “Morning.”

Ire froze, startled. Small-talk with strangers was not something visible from his comfort zone, even on a mentally clear day, which this was not.  
  
Fortunately for him, Julan didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. “You’re up early,” he said. “Where’re you off to?”  
  
The two Dunmer exchanged glances, and sniggered. “The mine, of course.” said the woman in the full plate armour. “It doesn’t run itself, you know.”  
  
Julan raised a eyebrow. “Fancy tin box you’re in, for a miner. D'you wear that because you keep missing the rock and hitting yourself with the pick?”  
  
“We’re not miners, you ignorant ash-eater!” she barked. “That’s whatslaves are for. My job is to keep them in line. And I don’t have time for this.” They marched on, heading for the western gate.  
  
Julan glowered after them, hand clenched around his sword-hilt. Once, he slid it an inch clear of its leather sheath, and Ire held his breath, afraid anything he said would make violence more likely, rather than less. But, when an Imperial gate-guard’s cheerful greeting floated up the cobbled street, Julan shoved his sword back into place, and turned away with a disgusted sigh.   
  


“Caldera is a mining town,” shrugged the bartender. “That’s why it was chartered by the Empire. And the way they’re raking in the ebony, Caldera is only going to keep growing as the money keeps rolling in. The town has a real Western flavour - makes outlanders feel right at home.”  
  
“I’ll bet,” growled Julan. “Want to take a guess how it makes the people of Morrowind feel? Seeing the riches of our land ripped out from under us and sold for profit?”  
  
The Redguard polished a glass with the detached air of one who has spent his working life de-escalating tension. “I’m sure I don’t know, sera, but we’re all just making a living as best we can, aren’t we? The Caldera Mining Company obtained the rights to the mine perfectly legitimately, under the terms of the Armistice.”  
  
“There you go,” said Iriel, shooting Julan a look. “Blame that living god of yours, Vivec, if you want to blame someone. Now, we need to–”  
  
“He’s not MY god,” Julan hissed back. “He betrayed Nerevar, he betrayed Morrowind, and each and every Dunmeri soul in it. The ebony is just a fraction of all the–”  
  
“That is _fascinating_ ,” interrupted Ire, “but this is  _really_ not the time.”  
  


The owner of the house was a Bosmer named Nedhelas, who had been hiding out at the inn since the trouble began. “When I rented the house, the landlord told me I couldn’t use the cellar,” he whispered, eyes wide above his snifter of flin. “Now I know why. Ever since I moved in, I’ve had bad dreams, and now this ghost appears, scares me half to death, and chases me out of the house whenever I try to sleep. It’s driving me crazy.” He gave them the key, and returned to the bar. “Good luck!”

The house, a small thatched cottage like the rest, looked far too new to be haunted. Even inside, everything was clean, neat and utterly tranquil.  
  
As Julan roamed around the living room, prodding cushions and opening cupboards, Iriel stood, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully. “From what I’ve read, hauntings are caused by souls that are unable to escape Mundus, due to incomplete psychic severance from a body, or location. Usually as a result of violent or traumatic death, but I find that hard to believe in this case. Surely someone local would remember something - this entire town can’t have been here more than a few years.”  
  
Julan, squinting suspiciously at a painting of a Bosmeri matron with a knowing smile and a necklace of teeth, nodded. “I was nine when they opened Vvardenfell to Imperial colonisation,” he said gloomily, “but although we got missionaries on bad days and Legionaries on worse ones, they never tried to build anything in the Grazelands. It wasn’t until I saw Ebonheart and this place that I realised how bad it was getting in the south. It… makes me feel sick, to be honest.”  
  
“Spirits can also be summoned,” mused Ire, trying a Detect Enchantment spell. “There’s a Mages Guild branch in Caldera. Perhaps Nedhelas has made an enemy there.”  
  
“You won’t need to go that far.” Julan had found the trapdoor, his voice acquiring a foreboding echo as he climbed down into it. “I found the _cellar_.”  
  
Something about the way he said “cellar” set off alarm bells, and Iriel quickly followed him down the ladder.

It was pitch dark. He cast a ball of light down an oddly familiar style of yellowstone tunnel.

Ten seconds later, they were both screaming, but for very different reasons.  
  


“KILL IT!!!” Ire stood in front of Julan, who was leaning on an ancient wooden door. Clicking and grinding sounds came loudly from behind it. “KILL IT RIGHT NOW, OR SO HELP ME, I SWEAR I WILL…” Sheer terror overloading his brain, he had no idea how he was going to finish the threat, so he didn’t. “…Just kill it! Please!”  
  
“IT’S AN ANCESTRAL TOMB!!!” Julan was less scared, more furious. “They built the HOUSE right over an ancestral tomb, with a TRAPDOOR down into it?! What were they thinking? That he could use the urns for STORAGE? Those godless Imperial SCUTTLEHEADS!!!”  
  
“JUST KILL THE SKELETON!!!”  
  
“No! It’s an ancestral guardian! It’s part of thefamily, it’s guarding theirrestingplace! I can’t just kill it, it’s not doing anything wrong! This house shouldn’t be here! We should get rid of the house, not the guardians!”  
  
“ALL RIGHT! FINE! I will GO OUTSIDE and cast the fire spells, ALL OF THE FIRE SPELLS and I will BURN down the HOUSE and the CELLAR and EVERYTHING IN IT including all the SPINDLY LEGS!!!”  
  
“Azura’s star, Ire, it’s just a skeleton!”  
  
“THEN KILL IT!!!”  
  
“NO!”  
  
They stared each other out until the Light spell faded, and they were left in a claustrophobic darkness full of rattling bones.  
  
“…please, Julan, please, I just really really hate skeletons.”  
  
“You know it’ll reanimate again eventually, right?”  
  
“… _please_ …”  
  
A deep, gravelly sigh. “Oh, all right.”  
  



	42. weak

“Are you sure going to Ald'ruhn isn’t a bad idea for you?”  
  
Iriel, navigating a ridge, couldn’t risk taking his eyes off the ground to look at Julan. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the ridge, instead. “You waited until now to say this? After we’ve walked for hours, and we’re almost there?”

“You were the one who insisted on walking,” Julan reminded him. “Sheogorath knows I didn’t want to. Between your ridiculous demands and the dreams, I’ve barely slept in two days.” He rubbed his forehead. “We could have been there ages ago if you’d let me use Intervention. Or if you’d swallow your damn pride and grovel to the Mages’ Guild.”  
  
Ire pretended he hadn’t heard. “What exactly do you mean, a bad idea for me?” he said, icily.  
  
“Well… you know people here, don’t you?”  
“Terribly dangerous habit that, knowing people.”  
“Oh stop it, Ire. You know what I mean.”  
“Not as well as you, apparently.”  
“You know where to get skooma.”  
“Perhaps I do. So what?”  
  
Julan’s boots crunched steadily through the gravel-strewn ash. “Look, I’m just trying to watch out for you, OK? I’m trying to help.”  
  
“I knowwhat you’re trying to do!” Ire stopped walking. “You think I’m not capable of staying clean on my own. You all think, all of you–”  
  
“Who is all of us?!”  
  
“You, Helende, Caius, Habasi… all of you. You think I’m weak, that I can’t do anything for myself.”  
  
“Iriel, twice in the last two days, you’ve begged me to do something for you because you  _couldn’t_ –”  
  
“AND I’M SICK OF IT!!!” He was startled by the intensity of his sudden emotion. “I’m sick of relying on other people to take care of me! I have to take control of my own life, and I can’t do that if everyone keeps assuming I can’t handle it. So stop it! You don’t even wantto be working for the Imperial Cult, so–”  
  
“You’re right! I don’t! But I stuck around anyway, because, yes, I thought you needed someone.”  
  
“Well, I don’t!” said Ire, folding his arms and looking away, to where the Ghostfence glowed blue in the distance. “What happened to that ridiculous secret mission you were going on about, when we met? Wasn’t it supposed to be terribly important, or something? Or did you forget about that, once you’d found an easy way to keep yourself in booze and Nord girls?”  
  
He glanced at Julan’s face, and immediately wished he hadn’t, so he looked at the mountains again. A silt strider slerried in the distance.  
  
“You’re right,” came Julan’s eventual reply, in a far more emotionless voice than Ire had expected. “I wasgetting distracted from my sacred mission. I guess… I’d been on my own for so long, I got caught up in having a friend, someone to talk to. I’d convinced myself you needed me, but… maybe I was just running away, again. What I have to do… it’s more important than what I want, or what you need.” He knelt, opened his bag, and began to methodically remove anything belonging to Iriel. “I’ve been neglecting my duty to my people.”  
  
Ire watched the pile of his books and potions at his feet increase. “Don’t give me that sword!” he said, as Julan discarded a steel longblade they had picked up in Caldera. “I know I paid for it, but what use would I have for such a thing?” After a moment’s consideration, Julan shrugged, and replaced it at his belt.  
  
He stood, and nodded formally to Ire. “Thank you for reminding me of my obligations. And thank you for the training. I’ve learned a lot from you about magic. Good luck with the Dwemer. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. It’s extremely unlikely we’ll meet again, so… Farewell.” Re-shouldering his pack, he turned east and headed into the Ashlands, towards the Ghostfence.  
  
 _Well. That didn’t take much, did it?_  Ire didn’t stay to watch him go. He headed straight for Ald'ruhn, walking fast, and didn’t see Julan turn and look back at the empty ash where he had been, before moving on.


	43. right

Iriel sat in a corner of the Rat in the Pot, being right about things.  
  
 _It’s for the best. I can’t deal with other people, and other people can’t deal with me. It’s unfair to expect anyone to put up with me. It was for his own good._  
  
He chanted them like the words of a spell to ward off the army of nasty thoughts creeping underneath the door of his mind, all wearing variations on the same uniform:  _you’re a horrible person and you’ve made a horrible mistake._

 _He’ll be fine. I’m sure he was just being over-dramatic with all that rubbish about never meeting again._ _ _Whatever he’s doing, he’ll do it better without me._ It’s nothing to do with me, anyway.  
  
You said that about Rabinna.  
  
I have my own problems. _ _I only have the energy to take care of myself right now.  
  
You know who you sound like, don’t you? Look who doesn’t need skooma to still be an asshole.  
  
_He finished his wine, and debated getting more, or whether that was a bad idea, and he should try to cast real spells to ward off thinking, such as Sound. The risk, he knew from experience, was that if it didn’t work, he’d land himself with a malevolent internal monologue  _and_ tinnitus.  
  
 _You know what would really make all these thoughts go away, don’t you? Lirielle probably has some. Then you could fall right back to the beginning again, right back to rock bottom! And prove them all right about you, that you have no willpower, and you can’t take care of yourself!_  
 _  
_ _I mean… proving that you’re a weak, useless waste of flesh would, in a way, be the ultimate way to prove yourself right. You’ve known it all along, after all._  
  
 _Nonono… not thinking that way right now._  
  
He’d experimented with Charm spells. They took a lot of magicka to cast, and produced a strange, brittle euphoria, followed by a sharp plunge into melancholy, which then gradually levelled off. It was… interesting, but Ire knew it wasn’t what he wanted right now. Habasi had been right about skooma. The mere memory of the effect spoiled you for other painkillers.  
  
Aengoth had offered him a job to steal a book of Daedric pornography from a local noblewoman, but his heart wasn’t even into that idea, either.  
  
He heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and a familiar voice. “Estoril, dear, could I trouble you for a roll of blank parchment?”  
  
Iriel looked up from his table just in time to meet Anarenen’s eyes, as they fell upon him, and froze there. His expression told Iriel that even without leaving a confession, Anarenen knew full well who had stolen from him. And that seeing Iriel now was causing him an incalculable amount of pain, betrayal and sorrow.  
  
“Never mind,” Anarenen said, his voice cracking as he quickly retraced his steps back towards the Mages Guild. “I’ll come back some other time.”  
  
 _You did that to him. He showed you nothing but kindness, and that’s how you repaid him. Like you repay everyone who ever tries to be kind to you, because you can’t stand how it makes you feel. This is what you do. This is who you ar–_  
  
“Fuck that.” The other denizens of the Rat in the Pot glanced up from their drinks, as the quiet High Elf in the corner began talking to himself out loud.  
  
“Fuck  _this_.” They observed with interest as he stood up, and, with great deliberation and considerable effort, overturned the table. “Fuck  _you_ ,” he said to the bar at large. He was crying. “FUCK EVERYTHING!!!”  
  
Iriel ran up the stairs, through the door of the tavern, out of the city, and onto the road to Ghostgate.  
  



	44. impossible

Iriel’s second journey to Ghostgate was easier than the first, physically, at least. Not because he remembered the way, but because he could follow the trail. He had argued with Julan about this only yesterday. “You can’t just  _leave_  the guar leather,” the Ashlander had insisted. “It’s wasteful and disrespectful!”  
  
Ire’s pleas that they had no need for it, and were burdened enough already had fallen on deaf ears. Now, the succession of carefully skinned animal corpses guided him back along the grey foyadas until he was once again before the arched gate to Red Mountain.

“Oh, it’s you!” The cheery Buoyant Armiger waved to him from her guard post. “Didn’t expect to see you back here. You just missed your Ashlander friend, though.”  
  
“He actually went through, this time?”  
  
“Oh, yes. No hesitation. I was shocked, too!” She leaned on her glass spear. “Are you going after him? Better wrap up safe, the blight’s blowing something chronic today.”  
  
“How long ago?” asked Ire, thankful that all Julan’s leather-collecting had bought him time.  
  
“Oh, not long at all,” said the Armiger. “He had a face like a slapped ogrim, though. Had a lovers’ tiff, have you?” Ire gave a non-committal shrug, and she looked sympathetic. “Sorry to hear it! Don’t worry, I’m sure you can still catch him up.”

Iriel couldn’t help himself. “Um. We’re actually not a couple, but… I wasn’t under the impression the Temple would approve, if we were.”  
  
She laughed. “Oh, ignore those musty old priests. I’m a Buoyant Armiger! Knight of Vehk! We’re all gay for Lord Vivec, it’s practically the entire point! Haven’t you read Sermon Twenty-Four?”  
  
“Um… no. So… how does that work, exactly? He’s a living God.”  
  
“To be honest, it’s a lot more symbolic these days than it used to be. He doesn’t go among us in person any more, ever since… well. But back when I first joined… you said it yourself. He’s a living God. I can’t even begin to describe it.”  
  
“Since you’re a woman, wouldn’t you be straight for Vivec?”  
  
“Ah! That’s where you’d be wrong! Lord Vivec is the union of male and female, the magic hermaphrodite, the martial axiom, the sex-death of language and unique in all the middle world! Mephala was his Anticipation! He is all genders and none, and I promise you… whoever or whatever you are, when you’re with Vivec, it’s always completely gay. Both ways. All possible ways. Many impossible ways, too.” She grinned wildly, and swung her spear back and forth. “Completely. Gay.”  
  
Ire backed away slowly, feeling for the gate switch behind him.  
  
The Armiger had been right about the weather. The blighted ash was coming down so thickly, he could barely see his hand in front of his face. He thought he could hear groans from up ahead, and staggered forwards as fast as he could, trying to make the sounds out over the wind.  
  
Something was definitely there, a hunched figure, half-buried in the falling ash.   
  
“Julan?” he called.  
  
Just as he reached it, it sat up sharply and howled into his face. It was humanoid, but swollen and half-rotted, its skin coming away in flakes and even chunks. He screamed, and it clung to him, pinning his arms and dragging him to his knees. Wailing and gurgling, it stared up at him beseechingly, eyes crusted and desperate.  
  
Then there was a succession of loud noises, and suddenly, it wasn’t looking at him any more, because it didn’t have a head. It released its grip, and collapsed sideways, as Julan emerged from the storm, yelling “What in OBLIVION are you DOING here?!”  
  
“I thought you might… need… help.” Ire said weakly.  
  
Julan looked distracted and sounded exasperated. “You can’t help me with this,” he said. “Look at you, you’re not even wearing armour, and that stalker was right on top of you. You’re going to catch corprus if you stay out here.”  
  
“You never even told me where you’re going!” said Ire, as Julan pulled him to his feet.  
  
“I told you! I can’t talk about it!”  
  
“Don’t give me that.” huffed Iriel. “You expect me to just leave you here with no explanation?”  
  
“Well… yes. You were quite ready to do that before.”  
  
“I know! And I was full of shit, and I’m sorry. You do realise I ran all the way from Ald'ruhn, don’t you?”

Raising his shield to ward off the worst of the ash, Julan steered Iriel into a slightly more sheltered area of the mountain. Once there, he stared in confusion. “But… why?”  
  
“Because I’m worried about you!” Ire said vehemently. “I’m scared you’re going to get yourself killed!”  
  
Julan resheathed his sword with diffident precision. “Look, that’s all very touching, but there’s no need. I’m ready for this, now.”  
  
“Ready for  _what?_ ”  
  
Julan’s shoulders sagged. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?” Ire shook his head, and he frowned. “If I tell you where I’m going, then maybe you’ll see sense and get out of here while you still can. But you have to swear yourself to secrecy.”  
  
For once, discretion kept Iriel from bringing up his previous success rate, at keeping secrets. “All right. I swear, if it’s so important to you.”  
  
“Then… I’m going to Dagoth Ur’s citadel.”  
  
Ire blinked. “You’re  _what?_ Why?”  
  
“To hunt him down, and kill him.”  
  
Iriel made small, incredulous noises. “You cannot be… wh… let me get this straight. You–”  
  
“No!” Julan shouted, “You don’t need to get anything straight, because you don’t know the first thing about it!”  
  
“I know he’s supposed to be some kind of immensely powerful and evil sorcerer, you said so yourself!”  
  
“Look, you have no idea who you’re talking to, so–”  
  
“I’m talking to an idiot Ashlander who not very long ago needed saving from clannfears!”  
  
“You’re never going to let me hear the end of that, are you?! Sheogorath!! Well you can think what you like, I’m going up there. And you’re going back to Ghostgate.”  
  
Iriel’s face got as close to grim determination as it could manage. “No. I’m. Not.”  
  
Julan threw up an ash-covered gauntlet. “What are you going to do? You’re a scholar. The most danger you’re used to is papercuts! This is serious, Iriel.”  
  
“I’m not leaving you here! I’m coming too, if only to try and talk you out of it!”   
  
Julan might have argued further, but his eyes were elsewhere, head making sharp, sudden moves. He winced. “Fine. Whatever. I need to… get this done. Come on, then.” He started walking. “This foyada leads straight up the mountain, to the mouth of the volcano. As long as we keep moving forwards, we can’t miss it.”  
  



	45. red

Despite Iriel’s longer legs, he found himself panting and struggling to keep up as Julan strode uphill at a furious pace. “Slow down!” he yelled, shielding his face from the wind. “What’s the hurry!” Julan ignored him, but slowed fractionally.   
  
They passed the turn-off to the Grace of Pride shrine, and continued north up the volcano as the ash-storm roared in their ears. Ire pulled his scarf higher, tucking the ends into his shirt.

“What?” Julan was looking back at him.  
  
Ire returned the look, blankly. “I didn’t say anything.”  
  
Julan’s brow creased. “Oh… I could have sworn you… Never mind.”  
  
The sky was an open wound, pouring down red torrents of ash. Iriel’s boots were full of it, and he could barely see. Julan was pulling ahead again, and Ire was about to shout to him, when Julan turned first, irritation on his face. “Look, I can’t hear what you’re saying when you whisper like that!”  
  
Ire was taken aback. “I didn’t say anything that time, either!”  
  
Julan gave him a suspicious look. “Don’t tease me, all right? I’m trying to concentrate.”  
  
They passed a battered wooden mine entrance, dug into the side of the foyada. Ire couldn’t imagine anything being so valuable that it’d be worth coming out here to mine it.  
  
He blinked ash from his eyes and trudged onwards. Looking down, he didn’t notice Julan had stopped until he walked into his back. “STOP DOING THAT!!” growled the Dunmer, spinning around.  
  
“I didn’t see you!” protested Iriel, but Julan shook his head, dislodging quantities of ash. “Not that! Stop _… saying_ things in that weird voice! If you’re trying to make me paranoid, it’s not working. Just STOP IT, all right?!”  
  
“I’m not making you paranoid, you’re doing that all by yourself,” muttered Iriel under his breath, as they continued upwards.  
  
After the initial corprus stalker, they encountered only cliff racers, although Julan kept flinching and whipping round to stare at nothing that Iriel could see. For all Julan’s wariness, though, it was Ire who saw the Hunger first. This was because it attacked him from behind. Approaching silently on its slender limbs, the first thing Ire knew about it was a searing pain in his back as it raked him with its long claws.  
  
Turning he was faced with something that looked like the offspring of a monkey and a tapeworm. He blasted a frost spell into it, which had no observable effect. Julan barrelled past him to engage it, but although he succeeded in pushing it back from Iriel, his sword seemed to constantly glance off the beast’s pale, greasy skin. They both tried fire spells, to no avail.  
  
“Daedra are resistant to most metals,” Iriel shouted. “but this one has elemental resistance too! We need an enchanted weapon, or a spell it’s weak to!” Julan, frantically parrying claws with his shield, didn’t seem to hear him.  
  
Iriel racked his brain, trying to remember what Hungers could be damaged by.  _If only I’d spent more time in the library actually reading Milktwyst’s Bestiary, and less time on my knees in front of it._  
  
Nothing he tried did it any real harm, although he did succeed in paralysing it, giving them a few seconds of breathing room. “We can’t kill it!” yelled Ire. “We have to go back down, let the Armigers handle it. You can’t do this through sheer willpower, it’s immune to your weapon!”  
  
Julan, glassy eyed and determined, was still trying to land a clean hit.  
  
“Julan! Listen to me–!” The Hunger, kinetic once more, whipped its spiked tail into Iriel, sending him tumbling back down the slope. He landed, head spinning, near the entrance to the mine. As he pushed himself up, his hand touched something metal buried in the ash. A wild, long-shot of an idea bounced into his scrambled brain.  
  
  
THUNK. The paralysed Hunger keeled over, a miner’s pick buried in the back of its head. Letting the heavy pick slip from his exhausted hands, Iriel staggered over to Julan, who was on his back in the ash, blinking and staring at nothing.   
  
“Are you all right?” gasped Ire. “I’m sorry it took so long, I thought you… I thought I was too late.”  
  
Julan groaned, and sat up. "Unngh… I’m not hurt, just winded… what… what happened?”  
  
Ire laughed breathlessly. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”  
  
Julan stared at him. At the improvised weapon lying in the ash. “Did you just kill a Daedra with a mining pick?”  
  
“It was the only thing I could find to enchant,” said Iriel. “I was just lucky there were still soul gems at the Shrine of Pride, and that some of them were filled! Most of all, I was lucky that I got an enchantment to take hold of the pick on my first attempt! Enchanting is so delicate, and I didn’t exactly have proper facilities! I was so scared it’d fail, and you’d be dead before I had time to get another one.” He started laughing again, and, knees buckling, sat down next to Julan.

He didn’t get long to recover. Julan was soon back on his feet and heading back in the direction of the summit, leaving Ire to scramble after him.  
  
There was definitely something wrong, thought Iriel, watching Julan stagger onward, noticeably slower now, and not merely from fatigue. He would suddenly veer sideways, then hit his head with the flat of his hand, as if frustrated, and correct his course. He rarely responded if Iriel tried to speak to him, but occasionally he would whip round, stare at him, then turn away again, shaking his head.  
  
It only got worse the higher they got. Ire could really feel the heat from the volcano’s crater, now, and the path was becoming ever steeper and harder to navigate. Sweat ran down his face, mingling with the ash to form trails that smudged messily when he wiped his face with his sleeve. His chest ached and his throat burned.  _I can’t carry on much longer._  
  
He didn’t have to. With a strangled cry, Julan stopped moving, and clutched at his head. “Aaaaaargh! Shut up! SHUT UP!!! I am NOT listening to you!!!”  
  
When Iriel reached him, he was swaying and panting, face damp and shining in the red light. Ire grabbed his shoulder and tried to make eye contact. “Julan? Can you hear me?” All he got was a violent shove, and “GAH!! Get AWAY from me!!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!”  
  
Ire tried to get through again. “Look at me! What’s the matter?”  
  
Julan doubled over in pain, oblivious to Iriel. “Nnnngh! No! I am NOT… Get OUT!! Aaaggh! Stop it, you s'wit!!” He raised his head, stared blankly into the storm, then suddenly howled and clawed at his ears so hard his nails left marks in the skin. “No!! That’s NOT true! That’s not why I’m… unngh… I am Indoril Nerevar reborn, and you will not… Aagh!” He screamed, convulsed, and then, as Ire watched helplessly, his eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious into the ash.


	46. dreams

“Aaaaaaaaaaarrgh!”  
  
“Sweet Alma, lad, do stop all this fussing.” Ulmiso Maloren, the Ghostgate healer, rinsed her sponge in searing water, and brought it once more across Iriel’s naked back. “I can’t heal it until I’ve cleaned all this ash out of it, can I? You’d end up with blight under the skin, and a nasty infection. Or worse. You should take another potion against blight before you sleep, tonight.”  
  
She continued scraping, while Ire bit down on the lumpy dormitory pillow and tried not to sob.

Eventually it was over, and she began to heal the deep gouges, humming softly as shimmering blue arcs of magic flowed from her hands into his skin. “It’ll probably scar, you know,” she tutted. “Serves you right for leaving it so long untreated. What were the two of you  _doing_ up there on the mountain? You’re very lucky that Armiger patrol found you when they did.”

Ire turned his head and squinted back at her, asking: “What’s wrong with him? Do you know yet?”  
  
Ulmiso was a professional healer, so her facial expressions on the job never extended past a placidly neutral smile. She deployed it now. “I’ve examined him, and there’s nothing physically wrong with him. He keeps babbling nonsense, but I think he’s just exhausted. He ought to wake up on his own soon, and we’ll see how he feels.”  
  
  
Iriel couldn’t sleep. There was no singing in the chapel tonight, but an elderly pilgrim in one of the other beds had ash-chancre, and never stopped coughing. The healer had left a candle by Julan’s bed burning, and from his position on the opposite wall, Ire could see him, sprawled on his back, the blankets twisted around his legs from the hours he had spent thrashing and muttering, lost in dreams. Now, in the small hours of the night, he was finally peaceful, chest rising and falling slowly, though his fingertips still twitched from time to time, lips shaping soundless words. Ire wondered where he was, and what he was seeing.  _Never mind him, what about you? Stop staring, Iriel._  
  
With a guilty start, he saw that Julan’s eyes had opened, and he was blinking uncertainly at Ire, struggling to focus. Iriel scurried barefoot across the stone floor, and crouched down by his friend’s bed. “It’s me,” he whispered. “How are you feeling?“  
  
Julan’s head jerked up off the pillow, and looked around. Then it fell back again "Uhn… I’m… in Ghostgate?… How did…? Oh Malacath, my head!” He squeezed his eyes shut again.  
  
“Shhh, don’t move,” said Iriel. “Let me try a spell.” He gently placed his hands on Julan’s temples, and tried to focus his limited healing abilities through his fingertips. “Does that help?”  
  
“Aah… yeah, a bit. Gah, my brain’s full of dust and ashes. Everything’s all mixed up.”  
  
Julan pushed himself up and leaned against the headboard. “I dreamed we climbed Red Mountain,” he said hazily. Then he saw Iriel’s expression. “Oh.” He rubbed at his head for a while, frowning. “I… think I remember now. But it was just like my dreams, except… the voices were different. Clearer. I could hear what they were saying.”  
  
Not at all sure he was going to like the answer, Ire asked, “What  _were_ they saying?”  
  
Julan didn’t seem to like the answer either, breaking eye contact and muttering: “Oh… I don’t know. Not much. It’s not important. What matters is, I failed again at my mission. I’m still not ready. Maybe I’ll never be ready.” He sighed like a falling tree. “Ai… I guess I should go back home and herd guar. Seems it’s all I’m fit for.”  
  
Iriel chewed his lip, struggling to think of something encouraging. “Herding guar actually sounds rather difficult,” he said at last. “I imagine it requires a lot of observation skills, patience, and… um… animal husbandry, and…” He felt Julan’s glare before even seeing it. “…Sorry. I’m not very good at this. But surely it can’t be completely hopeless. I mean, I’ve been very impressed by your physical, um…”  _don’t say anything weird, Ire_  “…prowess, by which I mean…”  _keep your eyes up, that’s right_  “…your skills. With weapons. As in, you know, using them. On people.” _ok, good, I think we got through that.  
  
_ “Uhh… Thanks.” Julan looked slightly nonplussed, but attempted a smile anyway. “So what do I do now?” When Ire only shrugged, he continued, reluctantly, “I do have one option. I’ve been avoiding it, but I don’t see what else I can try at this point. I’ll have to go home and ask my mother for advice.” He looked as if he’d rather go ballroom dancing with Molag Bal.  
  
“If you must,” Ire cautiously agreed. “But if you’re not in an immediate hurry, I could still do with help exploring another Dwemer ruin. I was reading about one that’s in the middle of the Molag Amur ashlands. There are some interesting things in Edwinna’s notes that I want to act on before  _she_ does.”  
  
Julan leaped at the proposed distraction. “Yeah! No more Imperial towns, let’s get back where the real fun is!”  
  
“Quiet down in there and get back in your own beds!” Ulmiso’s head poked around the screen and glared at them. “You’re keeping other people awake!”  
  
They exchanged a guilty look, and Iriel stifled a giggle, feeling like a schoolboy. Then Julan yawned. “Maybe we should get some sleep.”  
  
“I agree,” said Iriel. “I do have one question, however.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“When we were on the mountain, and you were in the grip of that delusional trance, I couldn’t help but overhear something.”  
  
“Uh… yes?”  
  
“You said that you were ‘Indoril Nerevar reborn’.”  
  
Julan’s face froze. “Did I?” he said, almost neutrally.  
  
“Yes,” said Ire, “You did. Care to explain?”  
  
Julan massaged his eye sockets with his fingers. “Not really, no,” he said. “But you’re not going to let me get away with that, are you? Look, I’ll tell you, but not tonight. My throat’s ash-sore, my head hurts, and this place is full of Temple s’wits. Later, all right?”  
  
He looked down, blinked, and began to rearrange the blankets. “Sheogorath… I understand she needed to take my armour off, but did the healer really have to go  _quite_ that far?”  
  
“I hadn’t noticed,” said Iriel.  
  



	47. running

“We’ve been this way before!” exclaimed Iriel, raking a hand through his hair as they rounded the crag. “Look down there. That’s the kagouti we killed for lunch.”  
  
“Yeah, but we’rehigher up, now,” Julan pointed out. “Once we reach the other side of the mountain, we’ll be able to see the towers again, and you’ll see we’re much closer than we were.” He scrutinised the mess of tangled, leafless trees around them. “I hope so, anyway,” he muttered, “or we’ve thrown the entire day to the guar.”

Hiking and water walking from Sadrith Mora to the remote Dwemer ruin of Nchuleftingth had seemed a viable proposition, on the map. On the ground, Molag Amur was a bleak, surreal wasteland of cracked ash pavements, lava pools, dead twisted trees and scalding steam vents that erupted suddenly from beneath in a way Ire was beginning to take personally. The ruin always seemed to be just over the next ridge, or beyond yet another uncrossable torrent of molten rock, but they hadn’t found it yet, and were feeling dangerously close to lost. The sun was beginning to sink.  
  
Ire, still looking at the kagouti, noticed movement. “Wait. Something’s down there.” He began preparing a fireball, but, on peering closer to aim, he let it fizzle out. “It’s a person,” he said. “An Argonian. So thin, I thought it was a Hunger. An escaped slave, perhaps.”  
  
The spindly figure moved jerkily, hesitantly, creeping around the body of the kagouti, inspecting it carefully. Its scales were pale and mottled along its bare torso, and its enormous head-crests swivelled and twitched, listening for danger.   
  
“Hey!” Julan called out, and the Argonian sprang up in panic, ready to flee just as soon as it knew which direction to choose.  
  
Ire shot his friend an irritated look. “You’re scaring him, you idiot!” But Julan was already skidding down the mountain. “Hey! Are you looking for meat? We took most of it, but there’s still some on the legs, if you want it. It’s only a couple of hours dead, it’s still good!”   
  
  
His name was Reeh-Jah, and he had escaped from the Tel Aruhn slave market.  _Xarxes only knows how he made it this far_ , thought Ire. He had eaten nothing but trama root for two days, and was now devouring kagouti meat, apparently without bothering to chew it. He finished, and grinned, showing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth, stained with blood.  
  
Ire tried not show his discomfort. He hadn’t been close to many Argonians, they being uncommon in Cyrodiil, and virtually unknown in Summerset. He didn’t dislike them, but their alien physiology always raised invasive questions in his mind that he had to suppress, for fear of causing offence.

Julan was less hesitant about personal interrogation. “What’s your story?” he was asking. “Are you from Black Marsh?”  
  
Reeh-Jah, cautiously reassured by the shared food, answered in a husky yet musical voice. “Yes. They take me from my parents’ farm since many months. They grab my clutch-mate too, but she bite the slaver’s arm, she escape. They put on my head a bag, with inside strong herbs, and I sleep. I wake up in another place, and the Dark Elf say I am now a slave, but I cannot be a slave. I must go home. My mother need me for the muck harvest. I must go to school, pass the exam. This is not right. I must get to Ebonheart, I must go home.”  
  
“Mother? School?” Julan frowned. “How old are you?”  
  
“Two. Uh… sorry, have two since Naming. Since hatching, have fourteen.”  
  
“Fourteen? Sheogorath… Look, don’t worry. We’ll help you get to Ebonheart.”

Ire nodded mutely. He couldn’t help wondering if Julan had deliberately avoided consulting him about aiding the slave, in order to make it more difficult for him to object.  
  
 _But… I wouldn’t have objected! I mean, yes, Ebonheart is a vast distance away, with no easy route from here. We’ll have to avoid unnecessary danger, so forget about finding the ruin. The safest option is probably to trek all the way back to Sadrith Mora and take the boat. It’ll take days and days, and yes, I’m frustrated, but I still wouldn’t leave a child here alone. I’m not a monster. Does he really think I would have refused? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering my behaviour, lately. Why would he expect anything other than selfishness from me?_  
  
He suddenly realised, with a horrible lurch, that the Argonian was looking at him. Apprehensively, guiltily, clearly interpreting the sadness and resignation on Ire’s face as a sign he didn’t want to help.  
  
“I can get there alone,” the boy insisted. “I can fight! Look!” He held up a set of ragged claws, one broken off completely at the quick.  
  
Iriel desperately attempted damage control, forcing an extremely artificial smile, and an: “Of course we’ll help!”   
  
Reeh-Jah looked unconvinced, his crests undulating nervously.  
  
  
It was a dry night, so they built a fire and slept under the stars. They didn’t have an extra bedroll, but before they could insist he took one of theirs, Reeh-Jah had curled up on the ground next to the fire, his limbs tucked into his body, and his tail wrapped around. He was making very deliberate snoring sounds.  
  
Iriel hovered, twisting his fingers, wondering what to do.  
  
“Leave him be,” Julan said. “He’s trying not to be a burden. If it makes him feel better, let him.”

Ire sat up to watch for slavers during the first part of the night, and spent the entire time trying to determine the exact degree of reproach that had been in Julan’s voice.  
  
  
He awoke, because the ground was shaking. He heard Julan shout something, and start loosing arrows, rapidly. The insipid morning light was enough to determine the target, firstly because it was enormous, and secondly because it was now bellowing loudly as the arrows grazed its thick skin. An ogrim was approaching.  
  
Hauling himself upright, cursing, he was summoning a Paralyse spell when he saw Reeh-Jah was there, eyes and crests flicking from side to side in panic.  
  
“Stay back,” Ire said to him firmly, as Julan gave up on arrows, and charged in to engage the ogrim before it got any closer.

“I can fight,” said the Argonian, hesitantly, his claws twitching. “I can help.”  
  
“No! Run away!” yelled Ire, trying to aim the spell past Julan and into the creature. He released it, missed by inches, and began preparing another.  
  
There was a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, then a flash of pale scales tore across his field of vision, heading straight for the ogrim. Reeh-Jah moved like lightning, and got there seconds before Julan. Enough time for it to be over in two brutal swipes of the ogrim’s fists.    
  
  
The ground was too hard to dig in, and neither of them liked the idea of lava burial, so they heaped ash over him instead. Nobody knew what words one should say at an Argonian funeral.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Julan said, again. “If anything, it was mine. I fell asleep on watch. With more warning, I could have taken it down faster.”  
  
He began moving a hand hesitantly toward Ire, considering whether to attempt some kind of physical-contact-based reassurance, then changed his mind, and put it down again. “At least he didn’t die running away,” he tried. “He died in battle. You can’t get a better death than that.”  
  
“He didn’t want to die in fucking battle!” snapped Ire. “He wanted to help his mother and go to school!”  
  
“I know, but–”  
  
“Don’t. Don’t say anything else.” Ire made a weary gesture, as if trying to shake something viscous from his hand. He began to gather his things together for travel. He no longer had the energy to care if he appeared callous, or worse, relieved by the removal of the delay. “Lets just get back up that bloody mountain.”


	48. eye

They had barely set foot in the bandit cave, when Iriel screamed. Julan spun round to see him doubled over, clutching his head in pain. “What got you?” he demanded, scanning the area frantically. “A trap? Is someone attacking us?”  
  
Ire only shook his head and moaned.   
  
“Then what’s wrong?”  
  
“It’s… It’s nothing. I’ll be fine. Forget about me. Check if anyone’s in here, before they find us first.” Ire screwed up his eyes and squinted down the dark tunnel. “Someone’s coming through a gate at the end!” He prepared to cast.  
  
Julan had no choice but to take him at his word, and concentrate on defending themselves.

Twenty minutes later, the cavern was peaceful. The bandits had fled, except for their leader, who was now feeding the slaughterfish in a deep pool at the back of the cave. Ire had fought hard, but was clearly suffering, and afterwards, he slumped down onto a bedroll next to the bandits’ fire, pressing his fists into his eye sockets and whimpering.  
  
“All right.” Julan sat down nearby and started cleaning the blood off his sword. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Ire was rocking back and forth. “Ngggh. No. Not going to be sick. Noooo. Breathe.” Still with his eyes shut, he started sucking air into his lungs as if his life depended on it.  
  
“What happened? You seemed fine when we were outside.”  
  
“I… I just have a… it’s like a migraine, but… not. Sorry, I… talk… talking is… not…”  
  
“Ohhh.” Julan nodded sympathetically. “Mother gets those, sometimes. Is there anything I can do? Should I try a healing spell?”  
  
“I… no… it’s not exactly  _pain_ , I… um… I just need to let it wear off. It can’t be more than… another… half-hour…”  
  
“You get this a lot?”  
  
“No, never.”  
  
“Then how do you know it’ll be half an hour? And… what do you mean, let it wear off?”  
  
“Unnngh…” Ire curled up into a ball. “I… you know that frost spell I showed you? If you could cast it really weakly… close to my eye sockets, I think it might… help…”  
  
Julan sighed. “Iriel… what did you do?”  
  
“Will you do the frost spell first? I can’t… talk… please?” He opened his eyes in order to shuffle closer, and Julan’s eyebrows shot up. “Your  _eyes_ … Azura’s star, Ire, your pupils are… huge! Tell me what happened!”  
  
Ire nestled his head into Julan’s lap, provoking a despairing look from the Ashlander. “What are you doing?”  
  
Ire shifted position, and frowned. “Can you take your greaves off? They’re hurting my head.”  
  
“Can I… what? Ire, please tell me you didn’t… somehow take skooma, did you, because… you’re being very, um…”  
  
“Noooo, no skooma. I’ve been verrrrry good! I think I’m jus’ losing my sense of… of proper boundaries because I’m horribly… ‘cause I’m all… can you do the spell now? Please?” He gazed up at Julan, imploringly.  
  
“I _…_ Mephala… Fine. Fine, whatever you want, just stop looking at me with those enormouseyes!”  
  
  
“Nnnnnnngh. A little to the left. Colder. Oh… gods… yes, like that. Ungggh…”  
  
“…Iriel. Please don’t.”  
  
“Sorry. It’s really helping, though! If I’d only known this was what it took to get into your–”  
  
“IRIEL.”  
  
“Sorry. I flirt when I’m… nnngh…”  
  
“This is sounding more and more like a convenient excuse. Will you at least tell me what you did to weaponise your eyeballs like that?”

Ire inhaled slowly through his nose, eyes still closed. “Do you remember when I stayed up late making potions for the trip, before we left Muriel’s?”  
  
“Of course. The fumes were so bad in that place I had to spend the whole evening at Fara’s, losing at scuttleboard to Rissinia.”  
  
“Yes, well… while you were gone, I got a little carried away. I was pulling an old alchemist’s trick, you see, of dosing myself up with Fortify Intelligence potions. Once you’ve taken a dozen or so, it’s like… your mind is so clear, you can remember every property of every ingredient at once, and all the exact quantities required. It becomes utter simplicity to calculate the optimal point for ratios, temperatures, Padomaic levels…”  
  
“Can you give me the short version?”  
  
“I made some really powerful potions. Which is good! If you’re making healing, or fortify potions, extreme potency is clearly a desirable outcome! But it turns out that some effects are better left at more moderate levels.”  
  
“I think I see where this is going.”  
  
“I took a thousand quells of Night Eye to the face. I think I can see through walls, now. I can feel all the colours of the universe, burning fractal patterns into the back of my fucking skull!”  
  
Julan gave a long sigh. “Just tell me one thing. How can you take that many Fortify Intelligence potions, and still be such a complete and utter s'wit?”

Ire was quiet for a while. Then: “…Julan?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry I’m all… utterly s'witty. Is that a word?”  
  
“Not really, no.”  
  
“I’m glad you’re here, because while I promise I haven’t taken any skooma, there almost certainly  _is_ skooma in one of those crates at the back of the cave. And I really, really, want it, but you won’t let me have any, will you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Thank you.”

Julan carried on icing Ire’s face, until he found his fingers becoming damp, tears leaking from the corners of Iriel’s eyes and crystallising into frost where they came into contact with the spell. “Ire… are you…?”  
  
“I’m sorry. Ignore me. It’s nothing, it’s stupid. I get emotional when I’m… oh, just ignore me. Please.”  
  
“…OK.”  
  
“It’s just… I’m scared I can’t ever move forwards. That every time I think I’m getting myself together, I fall apart again, or screw up horribly, and I end up back in the same place. Habasi said to watch the stones, but I can’t… I can’t see anything. I’m going in circles. Or a downward spiral. Circling the drain.”  
  
“Ire…”  
  
“It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything. It’s not your responsibility to fix me.”  
  
“I know, but…”  
  
“You’re doing the frost thing, and you’re listening to me vent. That’s plenty.”  
  
“Look… I’m not going to try and give you advice. My advice never did anyone any good. But still, I… don’t think it’s as bad as you say. Maybe you are going in circles, sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t getting anywhere. Remember the mountain, yesterday? We kept going in a circle, and sometimes we fell down ridges–”  
  
“I fell down ridges, you mean.”  
  
“Whatever, look, my point is that even though we went downhill sometimes, and round and round, every time we circled back, we were a little bit higher. We could see more.”  
  
“Gods, that’s so  _trite_.” Ire took a long breath. “But they’re all trite, aren’t they, all these stupid metaphors. Climbing mountains, watching stones. Pits. All just ways to try and rationalise something fundamentally chaotic and awful.”  
  
“Is that really so bad, though?” When Iriel didn’t answer, Julan continued massaging his brow, until he eventually realised, with a mixture of relief and exasperation, that Iriel had fallen asleep.


	49. harmless

“I’m glad I met you first,” Iriel said, as Julan finished healing the arrow wound in his arm. “Or I might have a considerably more negative view of Ashlanders.” He tested his arm for range of motion, and, apparently satisfied, began putting his shirt back on.  
  
“You can’t really blame them for ambushing us,” replied Julan, although he didn’t sound like his heart was in the argument.  
  
“Oh, I can.”

“Well, yes, but we  _are_ in Erabenimsun territory. They’re supposed to protect it.”  
  
“For people you claim aren’t savages, they have a remarkable disregard for common courtesies like greetingsand warnings. Even a  _threat_ would have been polite in comparison to shooting arrows from cover as ones first overture of–”  
  
“Yes, all right.” Julan sighed. “Everyone says the Erabenimsun value strength of arms and fighting skills above everything else. They think negotiation shows weakness. None of the other tribes like dealing with them, either. They shot at me as well, you know.”  
  
“Good thing too, or you might have refused to kill them.”  
  
“Oh, you want _me_ to be savage and violent?” He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes told Iriel he wasn’t entirely serious.  
  
“I find breathing to be very habit-forming, that’s all. Must be my addictive personality. Anyway, you did kill them.”  
  
“After that firestorm you cast, there wasn’t much hope for friendly conversation. Look… I’m not about to let them hurt you. I’m on your side. But if possible, I’d like to avoid killing any more of my people. There are few enough of us around, as it is. If we run into anyone else, and definitely if we find the main camp, just look harmless and let me do the talking, OK?”  
  
Ire laughed. “I don’t know how  _not_ to look harmless! And you know how I feel about talking to people. But fine. I promise not to interfere with any Ashlanders unless they’re actively trying to kill me.”  
  
He didn’t seriously think this would be a difficult promise to keep.  
  
  
  
A little while later, as they were following the shore of a wide lake of lava, Iriel stopped. He pointed, nervously. “Over there! Is… is that the main camp?”  
  
Julan followed his gaze, and snorted. “It’s a single yurt! I can only see two people. Hmm… looks like they’re both women. Mabrigash, probably.”  
  
“Mabrigash?”  
  
“Women like my mother, who get exiled for one thing or another, and then live alone, or with others like them. Then they get called witches, and people make up offensive rumours about them.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Oh, all kinds of stupid guarshit. That they’re all eeeeevil enchantresses who plot to steal men’s vital essence all the time. Mother always said if she wanted any kind of vital essence from a man, she’d rather drain his blood from the bottom of a spike pit than suck his spirit out with a ghost snake, or whatever it is mabrigash are supposed to do. That was a joke, by the way. Mother doesn’t have any spike pits. I’d know if she did, because she’d have made me dig them.”  
  
“Wait. A  _ghost snake?_ ”  
  
Julan looked slightly uncomfortable. “Yeaaaah. Uh… Mother thinks that probably started as a mabrigash in-joke that hunters started taking too seriously.”  
  
“So… it’s a metaphorical female-controlled phallus, by which these women symbolically reclaim sexual and social power from their male oppressors by figuratively emasculating them?”  
  
“Uh… it’s a dick joke, if that’s what you mean.”  
  
“…Yes.” Iriel inspected the ragged women poking around the camp fire, and…  _oh._  “I don’t know if they’re witches or not,” he said, “but at least they’re not hostile. That one’s waving at us. And holding up a… tea-kettle?”  
  
  
“Hello, boys! Assuh kal assour, bless and be blessed!” The mabrigash, if that’s what she was, smiled warmly as they approached. “What are two fine young lads like you doing out here today?” She wore her long, white hair loose over her shoulders, and Iriel had extreme difficulty guessing how old she was. She was wearing guarskin pants and a loose embroidered tunic with a deep slit at the neckline that exposed flashes of skin as she bent over the fire. “Mab!” she cried, “We’ve got guests!”

Another woman with silky dark brown hair and large, hooded eyes approached the fire, smiling. “Why, so we do,” she said in a voice like honeyed musk. “How wonderful! Why don’t you offer them some tea, Mim?”  
  
The white haired woman raised her eyebrows at her friend. “I was just about to! Give me a moment, I’m still making introductions! My name is Mimanu, and this is Mababi. Mim and Mab, you can call us. And who are you?”

“Julan Kaushibael,” said the owner of that name. “Under sun and sky, sisters.” He struck a casual pose, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. Iriel was so intensely amused by this that he forgot he was supposed to introduce himself, and just made noises behind his hand until Julan did it for him, with a jerk of his thumb and an eye-roll. “He’s Iriel. Don’t mind him. He’s harmless.”  
  
“I am,” admitted Ire. “Did someone mention tea?”  
  
“We’re looking for a Dwemer ruin,” Julan said nonchalantly, as Mim poured strong-smelling brown liquid into wooden cups. “Can you help us?”  
  
“A Dwemer ruin, eh? You must be strong warriors to be heading over that way.”  
  
“…hlp…”  
  
“I… well…” Julan grinned and took the cup. “We try. I mean, we’ve been into a few Dwemer ruins already, and it’s been nothing we couldn’t handle.” He shot Iriel a back-me-up-on-this glance, but Ire was staring at the cup in his hand, distracted by something unexpected, yet oddly familiar about the scent.  
  
“…mmf…”  
  
“What kind of tea is this, exactly?” he asked.  
  
“Trama root” said Mim, just as Mab said, “Bittergreen.”  
  
“Trama root  _and_ bittergreen,” they chorused. “Very popular blend, with us,” added Mim. “Gives you lots of energy, so you drink it up before it gets cold.”  
  
“…hlp…m…”  
  
Iriel almost took a sip, but paused. “Is there someone inside the yurt? I thought I heard something.”  
  
Mab smiled reassuringly. “Oh, that’s just old Zennammu. She’s probably just… in a sacred trance again. You know, communing with spirits.”  
  
Mim nodded vigorously. “That’ll be it, all right. She starts saying all kinds of things, in all kinds of voices. Sometimes, you know, she’ll even sound  _exactly_ like an Imperial Cult missionary with a gag in his mouth!”

There was silence, as various people exchanged various glances. Julan started to sip his tea, and Iriel had to snatch it out of his hand, and pour both cups onto the ground.  
  
Mab sighed in exasperation. “Oh, for fuck’s  _sake_ , Mim.”


	50. snake

“For the last time,” Iriel insisted, in what might be best described as an extremely forceful whisper, “it’s not about whether a ghost snake is a real thing, or a patriarchal construct used to discredit independent female magic users. It’s about the fact these mabrigash have an Imperial Cult missionary imprisoned in their yurt!”

“Yes, but you can’t jump to conclusions about their intentions… I mean… not all mabrigash–”  
  
“He is. Tied up. And. Gagged.”  
  
“Yeeeees, but what you have to understand is–”  
  
“What?” Iriel’s face was contorted with rage. “What could there possibly be to understand, except that we need to make them let him go!”  
  
Julan hesitated, trying to find the right words. “Missionaries are  _really_ annoying,” he said, eventually.  
  
  
Through a combination of stern looks and skewer-sharp elbows, Iriel finally succeeded in ungagging the young Breton man. He gasped for breath, and stammered that his name was Jocien Ancois. “I was sent to bring the good word of the Nine to the Erabenimsun, but… they were not very receptive.”  
  
Julan snorted, but when Ire glared at him, he threw up his hands and turned away.  
  
The missionary continued: “The Erabenimsun told me that I should seek out the mabrigash, that they would be interested in my books. I realise now they were mocking me, sending me into the witches’ clutches! Please, I don’t want violence, but I beg you… can’t you reason with them, and persuade them to release me?”  
  
The other occupant of the yurt cleared her throat, and politely motioned Iriel outside. This was Zennammu, the head mabrigash, her long, patterned robe hung with magical charms and amulets. Returning to the fireside, Iriel looked around for the others, but Mim and Mab, probably sensing they were likely to be in trouble with one or more of those present, had made themselves scarce.  
  
Zennammu turned to face Iriel, clasping her hands before her in what he knew to be a gesture not of supplication, but of veiled magical threat. At any moment I choose, the pose said, I can move my hands apart, crackling with elemental  energy, and you won’t enjoy it. Nevertheless, she smiled, the firelight illuminating her angular face and black hair, streaked with white.

“We are just poor outcasts,” she said pleasantly, in clear, Velothi-accented, Tamrielic. “We seek no trouble from anyone. We wish only to be left alone to carry out our magic. But we cannot allow you to take Jocien from us. For how can we work our magic, without a man?”  
  
Iriel blinked. “Are you referring to this so-called… ghost snake?”  
  
Her red eyes glinted. “I am. Would you like to see it?”  
  
Without waiting for him to answer, she opened her hands slowly, as if they held something precious. A delicate plume of smoke rose from her cupped palms, twisting and coalescing into a silvery serpent that hissed, and flicked its tongue at Iriel.  
  
Ire stared, speechless and hypnotised by the tiny snake’s sinuous movements. He dimly registered a hand gripping his arm, and Julan’s horrified whisper of “Black-Hands Mephala’s spidery appendage!” in his ear as he leaned around him to watch.  
  
“If you wish us to release Jocien”, the mabrigash said, “then you must bring us a better man. Now. Let me see…”  
  
In a flash, the snake darted out, fangs bared, into Iriel’s face. He jerked back, gasping, as his nose felt something akin to a small shock spell. A second later, Julan yelped. Ire was hit by a wave of weakness and dizziness, his vision filling with grey buzzing clouds. He felt Julan sag against him. They clung to each other, struggling to keep their feet, but the curse faded as quickly as it had begun.  
  
When they recovered themselves enough to look back at the mabrigash, she was smiling placidly, her hands folded neatly. The snake was nowhere to be seen. “The ghost snake has tasted you,” she announced. “You,” she indicated Julan, “might do, in a pinch. You, however…” she looked disdainfully at Ire, “lack the necessary masculine energy.”  
  
Iriel choked for a moment on his own incredulity and indignation. Then, a brief moment of self-reflection not producing much contradictory evidence, he hissed, “I don’t necessarily deny your conclusion, but your methodology is  _fundamentally flawed!_ ”  
  
“I shall make you an offer,” Zennammu continued, as if he had not spoken. “The brave hunter Assaba-Bentus of the Erabenimsun is young, strong, and handsome. If you bring him here, we will let Jocien go. Why don’t you run along and fetch him?”  
  
She must have imbued her final words with some sort of magical command. At least, that’s what Iriel and Julan later told each other must have happened, in order to make them both turn and flee in a blind panic from a solitary, smirking old woman.


	51. schemes

They ran for quite some time before self-consciousness overtook panic, but finally they slowed to a halt, gasping for breath.  
  
“Are you all right?” panted Iriel.  
  
“Fine,” rasped Julan, “but I’m reconsidering a lot of things I thought I knew about my mother.” He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of distressing mental images. “So, d'you think we should head for Erabenimsun camp?”  
  
Iriel’s eyes narrowed. “I am not procuring men for some old hag who claims she can evaluate my gender with an  _illusionary reptile!_ ”  
  
“You don’t think they really… you know… suck out men’s essence, do you?” Julan still sounded shaken.  
  
Ire hit him with as much withering scorn as he could cram into a single look. “You’re the bloody Ashlander, what do  _you_ think?”

“I… uh… ” Julan quickly weighed up several factors, including, but not limited to: his pride, his knowledge of Velothi women and his chances of winning an argument with Iriel. They all tipped the scale towards the same conclusion. “…Probably not,” he said.

“Of course she can’t.” Ire was still fuming. “She was just fucking with us. It was some kind of magical party trick. You can’t siphon off masculinity with a… a  _phantom lizard!_ ”  
  
“Look, even if you don’t want to do what she asked, we should still talk to the Erabenimsun. This is their problem, too.”  
  
Ire snorted. “As if they’ll care any more about that Breton than you do. I know how Ashlanders feel about Imperial Cult missionaries!”  
  
Julan exhaled sharply, and met Iriel’s glare. “Really? Because I don’t think you do. Let me tell you something about how Ashlanders feel about Imperial Cult missionaries. Sure, they’re annoying. They’re smug, self-righteous, patronising s'wits who come into our camps and tell us we’re ignorant and stupid and need to be saved. And we have to tolerate it. Do you know why that is?”  
  
He didn’t wait for Iriel to answer. “Because if any of those missionaries so much as breaks a nail while they’re in our camps, we’ll be branded as aggressive savages, and the Imperial bigwigs might just decide it’d be easier to  _cleanse_ us than  _convert_ us. How long do you think that idiot has been missing? Do you think they’ve alerted the Legion yet? A lost missionary! Probably butchered and eaten by the terrible primitives he was only trying to help out of the goodness of his heart! The cruelty! Better send reinforcements, to make sure we don’t miss any when we smear them into a bloody paste!”  
  
“Are you quite finished?” muttered Iriel, testily.  
  
Julan thought for a moment. “Yes, except to say this is why we have to go to the Erabenimsun. They need to know what might be on the wind. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll be as keen as you are to get that blighted Breton out of there peacefully.”  
  
“You’re sure they won’t just want to kill him? Won’t they be afraid he’ll report back that he was imprisoned by Ashlanders? In all fairness, he was!”  
  
“Maybe, but a vanished missionary’s still risky. Someone always investigates. Sheogorath…” He grimaced at an unpleasant realisation. “The obvious thing for the tribe to do is to murder all the mabrigash, and hope the missionary’s grateful enough to tell his chief-Imperial or whatever that they were on his side. Ai… this is bad.”  
  
Lacking a clear solution and on the verge of lacking daylight, they made camp. Iriel reread Edwinna’s densely hand-scribbled Nchuleftingth notes by magelight while Julan boiled up the rest of the kagouti meat into some kind of stew, slicing ash yam and throwing in herbs scavenged from the surrounding wastes. After a while, Ire put down his papers and watched, intrigued by the process. He could list the magical properties of every ingredient involved, but the ineffable alchemy of making things taste good was an ongoing mystery to him.  
  
The night sky was clear, and the ash-pavements stretched out around them, pale and cracked under the moons. Occasionally, the scream of an alit sliced through the constant, low-level hiss and bubble of the geological turmoil venting its steam from below the ground. Above it all, Iriel thought he could hear something else in the distance: chimes, high and hollow, like a moth’s funeral party.  
  
Julan nodded, when he mentioned it. “The main camp is close - look at all the tracks in the ash. Don’t worry,” he added, seeing Ire’s face, “we’re downwind, and they won’t see our smoke on this side of the mountain.”  
  
“Do you have a plan?”  
  
Julan raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Are you saying you trust me to handle this?”  
  
“I suppose so.”  
  
He nodded, satisfied. “Well… it’s not really a plan, more a place to get one. I’m not much of a planner. I prefer the direct approach.” He grinned at Ire. “That ridiculous scheme you pulled halfway up Red Mountain? Creating an enchanted weapon out of nowhere? That was great! I’d never have thought of that! Anyway… I think we should go to the camp tomorrow, and ask to speak to the wise-woman. Clever schemes to protect the tribe are her job.”  
  
“A wise-woman is different from a mabrigash, how?”  
  
“The side of the camp boundary she’s on, is all. Mother says things go badly if you have too many wise-women in one camp. Sometimes one chooses to leave, for the good of the tribe. Other times, they get pushed. My mother was a talented spell-weaver and farseer, but she fell out with the elders, and things got messy. You can ask her about it yourself, when we see her, but she doesn’t like to talk about it. She gets upset because of all the lies they tell about her in Ahemmusa camp. So many vicious and untrue rumours. That’s why I get angry when people say things about mabrigash - people have no idea what it’s been like for her. I’ve spent my life defending her, in one way or another.”  
  
“I see,” said Iriel. Ever since their disastrous trip up Red Mountain, Julan had remained cagey and tight-lipped about the reasons for his mission, citing tiredness, or an unspecified inability to talk about “the whole Nerevar thing” just then. Ire decided it was worth another try.  
  
“You said your sacred mission was your mother’s idea, didn’t you?” he ventured.   
  
Julan, cross-legged by the fire, shook his head. “Not her  _idea_ , she just…” He paused, looking at Iriel dubiously. “I did promise you answers,” he said. “I guess I owe you that much.” He began fiddling with a stick in front of him, prodding the embers around and frowning as he searched for the right words.  
  
“The first thing you should know, is that I… no… Let me start again. Sorry, this is… I don’t usually talk about this. The first thing is… my mother isn’t my mother by birth. Azura commanded her, sent her a dream. My mother, I mean. My mother who isn’t my mother, that is, not my real mother, whoever she… um. Sorry, this is confusing. Mashti, the woman I call my mother, dreamed Azura told her to look for a black kagouti, and follow it into the Grazelands. She found a baby. Me. And Azura told her that it was her task to raise me to be a great warrior, because I had an important destiny.”  
  
Iriel tried to restrict the amount of sheer incredulity in his voice. “This is the part about being Nerevar?”  
  
Julan nodded, his shoulders hunched, his face suffused with extreme uneasiness. “Yeeees,” he said. “That. Look, you know who Indoril Nerevar was, don’t you?”  
  
“Of course,” said Ire, struggling to remember anything at all from his world history lectures. “He’s some kind of Temple saint, as I recall. He, um… was instrumental in the, uh… founding of the Tribunal?”  
  
“To Oblivion with the Tribunal!” Seeing Ire flinch at his sudden anger, Julan stopped, pulled back. “Sorry. But you don’t know the half of it. That they even  _made_ him a saint is an insult, a slap in the face, when they made themselves gods by standing on his shoulders, then trampling him underfoot!”  
  
He was gesticulating with the stick now, ash flying off into Iriel’s hair. “Nerevar was the great war khan of Morrowind, he united our people - everyone, House and Clan - under his banner against the Nords and the Dwemer. And then they murdered him - Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil. There is evil magic in Red Mountain, and he forbade them from it, so they killed him, and used the evil to become gods! So did Dagoth Ur, and ever since then, he and the Tribunal have squabbled over the power like kagouti at a water hole. Well, Azura has had enough of their pride and their heresy, and she sent Nerevar’s soul back, to go to Red Mountain, kill the devil and destroy the evil magic once and for all. The Nerevarine.”  
  
Iriel failed to restrict the amount of sheer incredulity in his voice. “And you seriously think this is  _you?_ ”  
  
Julan sagged, lowered the stick. “I… I know it sounds unbelievable. Sometimes I barely even… look, this is why I don’t tell people. I know how it all sounds. But it’s true. Azura has revealed her will, and explained what must be done. I have a responsibility to fulfil, and however impossible it might seem, I have to try. Who could oppose Azura? I trust her to know what my destiny holds, and what I’m capable of.” He sounded like he was reciting from a script.

“I’m supposed to believe that Azura speaks to you?” spluttered Ire.  
  
“Me?” Julan snorted. “I’m no farseer. That’s wise-woman stuff. Only my mother can channel Azura’s dream-sendings. She has all these rituals and meditations for it. That’s why I have to go back and ask her! Gods, it’s not as if I’d be doing it if I had any other choice!”

He stirred the embers one last time before plunging the stick into the heart of the flames. “It’s… not something I talk about. I’ve barely ever told anyone. Which is good! I’m not supposed to tell anyone, it’s too dangerous. If they knew about me, the Temple would hunt me down and destroy me. So would the Empire, come to that, since the Nerevarine is also prophesied to free Morrowind from the foreign invaders. That’s why you have to keep my identity a secret.”  
  
Iriel’s incredulity finally maxed out and blew through its restraints. “What?! What is this utter ridiculousness I’m hearing? You’re not… I mean… people don’t just… look, in the first place, reincarnation isn’t a thing! I’m hardly a Psijic, but from everything I’ve read, souls don’t work that way! Once a soul leaves Mundus, it’s pure energy, it doesn’t… there’s no convincing evidence that any personality remains intact. So even if, hypothetically speaking, I accepted - which I absolutely _don’t_ , by the way - the proposition that…”  
  
Julan let the words wash over him with a look of resignation. “I know. I know how this all sounds. But I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m only asking you to keep my secret. The rest… it’s my burden, not yours. It’s always just been me and my mother. I’d never ask anyone else to share it.”  
  
Iriel stopped, and regarded his friend. He didn’t want to encourage Julan in his obvious delusions, but he also recognised misery when he saw it. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help,” he said. “I’ll do what I can, I’m just not certain what that is.”  
  
_Trying to get you out of this ridiculous notion, for a start. What in Auri-El’s name has this mother of his put into his head? Apparently Jocien Ancois isn’t the only person entrapped by mabrigash around here.  
_


	52. insult

They didn’t reach the wise-woman. Approaching the camp, they saw three Erabenimsun men lounging on the outskirts, doing something that was probably supposed to be guarding, but looked more like posing to Iriel. Everything about them said “Ashlander warrior”: the complex tattoos and piercings, the elaborately beaded hairstyles and the racer-skin belts hung with an array of unnervingly spiky chitinous weaponry. They were laughing loudly at each other in a way that set Iriel’s teeth on edge. No matter what their race or culture, in his experience, groups of bored young men like this were trouble. A steel band tightened around his chest. He forced breath into his lungs, and, before he could consciously stop himself, cast invisibility.

A hand fumbled for his wrist and jolted him visible again. “Hey, stop that. It’s fine. I’ll talk to them. You can stay here.”  
  
Julan marched off towards them. Julan wasn’t particularly short, for a Dark Elf, so as he got closer, and Iriel got a better sense of scale, he realised that the men must be giants among Dunmer. One of them was almost as tall as Iriel himself - taller, if you included the Ashlander’s elevated crest of hair, and Ire’s habitual slouch.  
  
Iriel waited, catching snatches of Ashlander language he couldn’t interpret. Then, the Erabenimsun’s dialect proving significantly different from Julan’s, they switched partially back into Tamrielic. Ire could now understand more, although he found he soon preferred ignorance.  
  
“No wonder you are so frightened of mabrigash, you Ahemmusa  _khett_ ,” one of the Erabenimsun was sneering. “Everyone knows all Ahemmusa men have their  _boakas_ bitten off long time ago by mabrigash, and witch women are their khans now.”  
  
“Yass,” said another. “We know better how to deal with mabrigash here.”  
  
“You are not marked for Ahemmusa, or any clan. Begone,  _haisshan_. If your tribe will not have you, then you may be sure we will not.”  
  
“Is this why you are prancing around with  _vassith_ n'wah? Yeah, we see you hiding back there, yellow sack of  _vassith_ Altmer shit–”

It was at this point that Julan threw the first punch. The first of only two, because the second, from the towering Erabenimsun with the extravagant hair, connected with Julan’s face with sufficient force to leave him collapsed and groaning in the dirt. Iriel squeaked in horror and dashed over. The warriors were already turning away, bored by the lack of challenge.  
  
“Do not worry,” smirked one, over his shoulder to Iriel. “I lose honour if I touch a pathetic  _vassith_ like you.”  
  
Julan’s left brow was split and bleeding, and the entire eye socket would swell up before long. Still, he angrily batted away Ire’s hands. “Get off me, I’m not finished…”  
  
“Yes, you are.”  
  
“GET BACK HERE, YOU BASTARD SONS OF SYPHILITIC NIX-BITCHES, I’M NOT DONE WITH–” He tried to stand, turned ashen and fell to his hands and knees, retching.  
  
“Yes. You. Are.” Ire suddenly wished the ghost snake really could suck out this so-called masculine energy Zennammu had mentioned. Right now, he would be very tempted to use one on everyone involved, to see if it helped.  
  
 _I wonder if they’d let me be an honorary mabrigash? I think I’d be good at it. Living away from everyone, making up joke spells to scare tourists, brewing up drugs in my tea-kettle. I should invite Sottilde, I’m sure she’d be game. If I forgive her, I mean. Ooh! Perhaps Kaye would come to convert me, and I could tie him up in my yurt!_  
  
Before this train of thought could become any more exciting, Ire was interrupted by an Erabenimsun teenage girl hovering nearby. “Outlander. What do you want here?”  
  
“Um… can we speak to the wise-woman?”  
  
The girl glanced in the direction of the warriors, and back to Ire. “No. That is impossible. You should be gone.”  
  
“Wait… do you know a warrior named Assaba… something?”  
  
“Assaba-Bentus? He’s over there. I’ll fetch him.”  
  
She left, and presently a dark-haired warrior appeared, more mature than the others, but undoubtedly still strong and handsome. “An outlander asks for me?” he enquired, with some bemusement.  
  
Iriel tried to explain about the missionary, and the mabrigash. Julan was sitting on the ground, nursing his eye and, Ire suspected, sulking.  
  
Assaba-Bentus laughed. “I remember the Breton. He came to our camp speaking many lies from a large book. We told him the mabrigash wanted to hear his words. Of course he was captured by the mabrigash. He couldn’t escape from his shirt without help.”  
  
Iriel made his voice as neutral as possible. “The mabrigash say they will release him, if you will take his place.”  
  
“What? You want me to go live with the witch-women? Do you think I am a fool like Jocien? Do you think I would fall for their charms?”  
  
“Are they so very charming, then?”  
  
He snorted, but there was a certain softness in his tone that made Iriel wonder if he wasn’t getting involved in some kind of bizarre, ongoing, courtship ritual. “Mimanu tried her charms on me. I let her think they were working and escaped the next morning.”  
  
Ire shrugged. “So do the same thing again, if it’s so easy. If you do that, I’ll do what I can to get that missionary out of here permanently.”  
  
  
  
Jocien was less co-operative. Delighted to be freed, he shook Iriel’s hand warmly, and wished him all the blessings of the Nine. “Now I can return to Erabenimsun camp and continue to teach them of the Empire and its ways,” he smiled.  
  
Exchanging a look of horror with Julan, Iriel quickly found a scroll of Divine Intervention and pressed it into his hands. “Your zeal is commendable,” he said, “but I was sent to tell you that you are urgently required at the Ebonheart Chapels. There’s a lot of important, um… shriving to be done.”  
  
Jocien looked disappointed, but nodded dutifully, and read the scroll. Mim blew him a kiss as he vanished.  
  
  
  
“Let me do the talking, Iriel, you don’t  _understand_ my people like I do.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Be careful you don’t  _provoke_ anyone, Iriel, they might  _attack_ , and I might be forced to  _hurt_ someone.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“I’m sorry. Do you want another frost spell on your eye?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Are you angry with me?”  
  
“No! I’m angry that  _this_ is the impression you’re getting of my people. It’s not… we’re not all…”  
  
“I know that. You’re not like them.”  
  
“Nor are most Velothi! They were just… they called you  _vassith_. They shouldn’t have done that. It’s… an insult. I don’t want to translate it.”  
  
“You don’t need to, I can guess. Gay, effeminate, physically weak, penetrated sexually. Correct?”  
  
“…Yes. They had no right to say that to you. It’s unfair and…”  
  
“If you’re going to say it’s untrue, don’t bother. It’s all perfectly true.”  
  
“That’s not the point! They meant it to be the worst insult they could think of!”  
  
“I know. I’m quite used to it, I assure you, from all kinds of people. You don’t need to defend my honour. But perhaps you weren’t defending my honour, you were defending your own, by association.”  
  
Julan looked hurt, but then sighed. “A little of both, maybe.”  
  
“Well… if you’re going to get angry about it, at least be angry for the right reasons. It’s not that any of the things I listed are either untrue, or inherently insulting. It’s that he  _thought_ they were insulting, and that he thought they were all connected. They aren’t always. For example, there are some extremely strong, masculine men, huge warriors with muscles up to  _here_ , who want nothing more than to be fucked senseless by the biggest cocks they can possibly… I’m sorry, is this line of conversation bothering you?”  
  
“I… uh…”  
  
“Honestly, you’re so sensitive. Such a delicate flower. Very well then, I shall protect your frail heterosexual sensibilities from the terrible reality of–”  
  
Julan was laughing, despite himself. “For Sheogorath’s sake, Iriel,  _shut up!_ ”  
  
  
  
After the trials of the journey, the Dwemer ruin itself proved far less arduous. Iriel had carefully assembled a network of interlocking lies to feed to Edwinna’s investigators at Nchuleftingth, but fortunately for his limited acting skills, he didn’t need any of them. They were barely aware of which month it was, let alone who had been expelled from the Ald'ruhn Mages’ Guild for incompetence, non-disclosure of a criminal record and drug abuse. They were thankful that anyone from the Guild still remembered they existed. And they were terribly sorry, but their associate had taken the excavation report down to the deeper floors, the ones with all the unmapped rooms and undiscovered treasures. Unfortunately, Iriel would have to go down there himself in order to retrieve it.  
  
  
  
“What’s so special about this book?” Julan could tell it was special, because he wasn’t allowed to carry it. Also because Ire was oscillating wildly between staring at the faded text making extended vowel sounds, and clutching it to his chest and engaging in what can only be described as  _cackling_. “What’s it about?”  
  
“I don’t know!” Ire exclaimed gleefully. “But I know how I might begin to! It’s extremely fragmentary, but parts of it are definitely bilingual!”  
  
Julan gave him a blank look.   
  
“In Aldmeris as well as Dwemeris! We might be able to use it to help translate the other Dwemer book!”  
  
“You can read Aldmeris?”  
  
“Well… it’s the basis of most modern Merish languages, although much of the word usage has changed so significantly that the similarities can actually be very misleading. I studied it a little at the Tower, but I’d need dictionaries and grammars to make much sense of it. The Dwemeris is the really exciting part, if I can begin to unlock it. But I don’t know anything about the structure of Dwemeris at all, or even the script. I need more resources.”  
  
“Why don’t you give it to Edwinna, in return for letting you back into the Guild?”  
  
“Because she doesn’t deserve it. And I have a better option.”  _Not yet, though. I want time to examine it properly before I let Baladas gets his hands on it._  
  
As they headed north out of Molag Amur towards the coast, they saw a well-dressed Imperial in the road. He shouted, and waved impatiently. “You have to help me! Those thieving Ashlanders stole my shipment of guar hides!”  
  
Julan looked at Iriel apprehensively. Ire looked back, trying not to laugh. “Sorry,” he said to the Imperial, “you’re on your own.”  
  
As they walked past, Julan added helpfully, “Try the mabrigash!” and received a shove from a giggling Iriel. Who then got shoved back by Julan, a few paces later. Caught off balance, Ire yelped and fell over.  
  
“Sorry!” Julan said, face frozen with guilt. “I’ve, uh… never done that before, and I guess I misjudged how hard you’re meant to do it.”  
  
“Neither have I,” Ire admitted. “Serves me right for starting it, I suppose. Even so,” he pouted, “you should be more careful. I’m a pathetic  _vassith_ , you know.”  
  
“Suuuure you are.”  
  
“I am! You’ll lose your honour, touching me.”  
  
“Suuuure I will.” Julan rolled his eyes as he reached down to help Iriel back to his feet.  
  



	53. prayer

“IRIEL!”  
  
They had barely stepped off the boat in Ebonheart, but there he was, passing through the bustling docks, carrying a boxful of scrolls. To Iriel’s utter astonishment, Kaye dropped the box, beamed like a sun god and enveloped him in a fierce hug that left him every kind of breathless.  
  
“Iriel! You’re a miracle!” A burning flood of mingled feelings and sensations overwhelmed his entire being. His internal monologue shut down completely for several seconds, returning only in fragile fragments of:  _is this real? did I fall asleep on the boat? oh gods his neck smells like holy incense, sacred and profane devotions, what the fuck is happening._  
  
“You’re a Nine-blessed wonder! I was about to report Jocien’s disappearance to the Legion! How in the name of Zenithar did you find him?” Kaye partially released Iriel and held him by the shoulders at arms length, still bathing him in the rapturous light of his smile.  
  
“You must come to the Chapels. You were headed there anyway, right? Here, let me escort you.” Wrapping an arm round Iriel’s waist, Kaye began steering him through the crowds, talking animatedly the whole time. Iriel moved as if through a dream, still not entirely sure he was awake.  
  
“I’ll just… see you in the Six Fishes later, then,” Julan said, to himself, since Iriel was already out of earshot. He turned to go, and saw Kaye’s box of scrolls, lying forgotten on the quay.  
  
He glanced around. No one was watching. With only very minor hesitation, he kicked it viciously, sending it over the edge of the wooden boards and into the impassive waters of the harbour.  
  
  
  
It was a bright Loredas morning, and although no service was currently in progress, the Chapels were at their busiest. Iulus Truptor was addressing a group of well-scrubbed children on the importance of penitence, while their parents gossiped in the background and admired the new altar-cloth sewn by the Temperance League of Kynareth. A boy was haranguing people with a collection plate, which he was banging with a spoon. A smiling woman was discreetly slipping pamphlets about the Fifteen Holy Arts of Dibella to ladies of marriageable age. Everything was joyful noise and excited evangelism, until Kaye towed Iriel into the centre of the room and called for attention. Silence gradually fell, as the bottom dropped out of Ire’s stomach.  
  
“Friends! I’d like to introduce you to someone who has shown himself to be a man of great bravery, piety and mercy.”  
  
All the eyes in the room turned upon Iriel. He couldn’t breathe. His heart was an iron fist, punching through the ragged ruin of his ribs, again and again, faster and faster.  
  
“Our beloved brother Jocien” here, Kaye paused to indicate the young missionary, who was sitting along the far wall, clasping the hand of a brunette priestess, “had been lost to us for many months, sent on a dangerous mission to bring the light of the Nine to the primitive Ashlanders. But this man, this man here, only recently initiated in to the Imperial Cult…”  
  
He couldn’t move to cast an illusion spell, his body was already paralysed and his head was a ringing, buzzing maelstrom. He couldn’t hear what Kaye was saying any more, and all he could see were the eyes, the eyes, the eyes.  
  
He felt the tidal wave of overwhelming doom sweep closer, rising higher and higher until there was nothing else in the world, until it finally crashed down onto him and swept him under.  
  
  
  
The morning wore on. Beneath the docks, the scrolls dissolved into gentle ribbons of red and green sparkling bubbles.  
  
  
  
Deep in the basement of the Chapels, there was a prayer room. Inside, the room was divided into nine separate, wood-panelled alcoves, each containing a cushion, a holy icon to aid meditation, and a small candle in an engraved glass holder. Heavy velvet curtains screened each alcove, providing a few square feet of private contemplation for each worshipper.  
  
Kaye, walking softly, approached the very last booth. He knocked on the drawn curtain, which didn’t achieve much, so eventually, he tweaked aside the edge of the fabric, and peered into the darkness. The candle had been extinguished. “Can I come in?” he asked, gently.  
  
Iriel, hunched and motionless in the corner, didn’t move, or look up. After a moment’s consideration, Kaye moved the curtain across to its halfway point, and knelt in the opening.  
  
“Iriel, I don’t know what I did wrong, but–”  
  
“Please go away.” Iriel had the tone of one who has mostly finished crying, but only barely.  
  
“I simply want to understand. Everyone here is a friend. They only wanted to show their appreciation. I only meant to–”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’m deeply sorry that I caused you pain. That’s all I really wanted to say. And to thank you once more. Jocien is a protégé and a friend. If he had died…”  
  
Iriel rubbed his sleeves across his face and met Kaye’s sorrowful gaze. “I barely did anything,” he said. “Please don’t tell people I’m a hero. It’s not true, and I… I can’t handle the attention.”  
  
Kaye began to smile. “Not only your bravery does you credit. I’m deeply touched by your humility.”  
  
“It’s really not humility.”  
  
“Now you’re being humble about your humility!”  
  
Iriel gave up trying to explain, and just enjoyed the sight of Kaye’s face, his hair backlit like a halo. He felt light-headed.  
  
“Is there anything I can do to make it up to you,” Kaye was asking, his voice all solicitude and honey, “anything at all?”  
  
_Oh, what the fuck. It’s not as if I could look more pathetic, at this point, is it? The worst that can happen is I have to walk out of here and never come back._  
  
“You could kiss me,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve… accidentally fallen for you a little.”  
  
Kaye was, for once, completely lost for words. Then he smiled - a completely different smile to any of the ones Iriel had seen up until that moment. He stepped forwards into the prayer alcove, and pulled the curtain closed behind him.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I've put up a separate Iriel childhood flashback story, called [The Waystone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5564653). It has Summerset Isles magitech, social class divisions, and Iriel doing something incredibly unwise.


	54. humility

“Sorry I’m late,” said Iriel smugly, as he slid smugly onto the barstool next to Julan and, grinning smugly, smugly took a sip of his friend’s beer. Smugly.  
  
Julan stared at him. “No you’re not!”  
  
“No,” agreed Ire, “I’m not.”  
  
“You’ve got a, uh… On your neck. You might want to… um. Wear a scarf.”  
  
Ire, very deliberately (and smugly - please do just assume you should attach ‘smugly’ to all Iriel’s verbs in this scene), pushed his hair behind his ear and adjusted the neckline of his shirt for maximum visibility.

“So,” Julan said, in a voice like stone slabs falling on spring flowers, “I gather congratulations are in order.” He said 'congratulations’ in the way people usually say 'terminal illness’.  
  
Iriel smiled a smile that, under different circumstances, might have been enigmatic, but currently really wasn’t. “I suppose you could say I’ve been  _taking holy ord_ –”  
  
“Gah!” Julan moaned and swatted at him. “Spare me all the terrible puns you’ve been thinking up on your way over here! Just don’t! You got laid, well done. No need to rub my nose in it with awful jokes.”

“Awww…” Ire made a face and stole the mazte again. “If it helps, I didn’t get  _laid_ laid. Apparently that would be too utterly sacrilegious. Well, sacrilegious plusthe old lady in the next prayer booth telling Akatosh about her bunions might hear us. And then he had to leave, because he was already late for a meditation circle.” His smile turned impish. “I very much hope he can’t concentrate at all. I do have a date soon, though. He’s taking me to the Imperial Cult’s Old Life celebration.”

He swigged the mazte, then started dabbing at his lower lip. “Mara’s arse, why do human men have to grow so much hair on their faces. It’s completely unnecessary. Reu wasn’t much into kissing, thankfully. Do you think that’s a human thing? …oh, why am I asking this as if you’d have anything to contribute.” He appraised Julan critically. “I expected you’d be drunker than this by now.”  
  
Even discounting the black eye still smearing malignant purples and browns around his eye socket, Julan looked like he’d stared into the hellmouth without safety goggles. “Not by choice! You had all the money in  _your_ purse!” he growled.  
  
“Why does everything always have to involve alcohol, with you,” tutted Ire, picking bits of dried candle-wax off his pants.  
  
Julan watched, eyelid twitching slightly. “Because I keep getting into situations where I need it! I’ve had to hang around in thrice-blighted Ebonheart all morning, fending off insults from bloated Imperial s'wits, waiting for  _you_ to finish getting gnawed on by Cultists!”  
  
“He admires my humility, you know.”  
“What?”  
“Kaye! He thinks I’m humble.”  
“ _You?_ ”  
“I know.”

Julan repossessed the mazte with a scowl. “I don’t get what you see in him. He must be twice your age.”  
  
Ire made scoffing noises. “He is  _not_. You just don’t know anything about human ageing. Anyway… so what if he  _is_  a bit older than me? I might learn something.” His smile exceeded the boundaries of mere smugness, and entered the realm of gleeful delight in the suffering of others. “Divine revelation, for example.”  
  
“Stop.”  
“Being a lay healer.”  
“Please.”  
“Receiving holy blessings.”  
“I hate you.”  
“Kneeling before the altar of–”  
“NO!”  
“Obtaining alms for the poor.”  
“…What?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Can’t you just be happy for me? Anyway, you’ve got some nerve telling me I’m rubbing your nose in anything, considering what  _you_ did with Sottilde.”  
  
Julan froze, the bottle halfway to his lips, eyes filled with horror. “I… really hoped you didn’t know about that,” he said, finally.  
  
“You were right below my room, keeping me awake!”  
  
“Oh. Oh… Sheogorath…” To Iriel’s astonishment, he pushed away the bottle and buried his head in his folded arms, staring down at the bar in an agony of embarrassment.  
  
“What’s wrong?” asked Ire, “I was upset at the time, but I’m over it now. I like Sottilde. If the two of you want to–”  
  
“Noooo, stop, don’t say anything, I want to forget it ever happened and never speak to her again! Can’t you…  _pretend_ you don’t know, because I can’t stand it, don’t make me talk about it.” His voice came muffled by his arms and echoing off the bar-top.  
  
Ire was perplexed. “Did something terrible happen that I missed? You both sounded happy enough at the time.”  
  
“Aaaaaaaaarrrgh!”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
Julan’s words arrived in a monotone, staccato rush of shame: “it wasn’t terrible i just shouldn’t have i don’t hate her i barely know her i can’t do one night stands they make me feel like shit i don’t know why i just feel guilty and you knowing and even worse hearing makes it a thousand times worse because if i’m going to do stupid things they should at least be private especially things like that sheogorath’s teeth.”  
  
“Well, I would certainly have appreciated it being more private, but why was it stupid?”  
  
“Maybe not stupid, exactly, just… meaningless.”  
  
“Meaningless can be fun, can’t it? You’re not allowed to have fun?”  
  
“No! I have a task, a responsibility! I shouldn’t be… getting distracted. People are dying. I have to… nngh… You brought the money, right? I  _really_ need another mazte.”  
  
Iriel leaned back in his chair, sucking his teeth.  _What in Oblivion am I going to do with him?_  
  
“If you’re going to keep fixating on this alleged responsibility of yours, then we can go and talk to your mother, like you suggested,” he said. “But I want to head up to Balmora, first, and see about this research position. If I’m not to be a complete embarrassment to Kaye, I need a job, and not the Thieves Guild kind. You’re not the only one who needs to take responsibility.”


	55. dissipated

Several floors below, a key clinked delicately in a lock. Something in Iriel’s hindbrain registered the sound, and forced him awake, although he didn’t immediately realise why. He opened his eyes. And remembered.  
  
 _Shit!  
_  
Downstairs, he heard the front door swing open.  
  
 _SHIT!!!_

Habasi had collared them the previous evening, as they came off the silt strider.   
  
 _“You! You’ll do. Get over here, now! Habasi has no agents, and the job is urgent!”_  
  
Ire sat up, recoiling from the light streaming through a large window. He was sprawled on top of the covers of a double bed, in a richly-furnished room decorated in the Hlaalu style popular in Balmora - still recognisably Dunmeri, but with Imperial influences creeping into the fabrics and designs. There were dragons embroidered onto the bedspread. He turned and shook the sleeping elf beside him. “Wake up, you idiot! We have to get out of here!” Footsteps echoed along the ground floor.  
  
 _“Habasi has heard that Ralen Hlaalo’s mansion is being cleared tomorrow! This is bad, because Habasi’s client wants the vintage brandy from the cellars. Hlaalo himself is dead, and will not trouble you. The housekeeper may, but she goes home between dusk and dawn, locking the doors. Habasi needs someone who can get in and out, tonight!”_  
  
In had been easy enough. Out was proving more troublesome then expected. Principally, because when presented with an unattended mansion and a well-stocked wine cellar, it turned out that neither Iriel nor Julan were quite as ready for a life of responsibility as they had previously proclaimed.  
  
Julan groaned and rolled over. “Nnnngh. Wh… whr am I? Pls say quietly. Head… bad.”  
  
His own being no better, Ire had little sympathy. “We fell asleep! It’s morning! I can hear the housekeeper downstairs!”  
  
The bedroom was a mess, strewn with wine bottles and expensive clothing spilling outwards from the huge wardrobe. Iriel couldn’t remember what condition they’d left the downstairs in, which wasn’t reassuring. And now there were footsteps on the stairs.  
  
He eyed the window. “Can you levitate?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“You can now,” announced Ire, hurling an undulating mass of Alteration magic at him. Julan began to rise off the bed with a terrified expression as Ire repeated the a spell on himself and wrenched open the window.  
  
“Ohhhh no.” Julan clung to the bedpost, legs flailing above him, centre of gravity thoroughly unmoored. “You can’t be serious. Don’t you dare, you n'wah, get me down from here, or I’ll– look, just cast a blighted Intervent–”  
  
“No time to talk! Get the bag!” Iriel grabbed Julan’s arm with one hand, braced against the windowsill with the other, and launched them both into space.  
  
“Aaaaaaaargh!!!” Julan fell the last couple of feet and landed awkwardly on top of the bag he had barely managed to grab at the last second.  
  
Ire’s spell lasted slightly longer, allowing for a more graceful descent into the street behind the mansion. “Is everything all right?” he demanded. “You didn’t break anything, did you?”  
  
“Nggggh… I don’t know… I fell on my wrist, and it’s… argh… It hurts like I jammed a trama thorn through it.”  
  
“Not you! The vintage brandy bottles!” Iriel stepped over the prone body of his fallen comrade and pulled the bag out from under him. “Thank every Aedra, they’re still intact.”  
  
“Good, because after this, I’m damn well going to drink them,” growled Julan.  
  
“Oh no you’re not. You’re going to take them to Habasi at the South Wall.” Seeing Julan’s face, he added, “And if Sottilde is there, you’re going to talk to her politely, like a fucking adult.”  
  
“Urrgh… Where are you going, then? You know you’re still wearing that dead noble’s fancy shirt, right?”  
  
“So are you. Red brocade suits you. Sottilde’s going to  _love_ it.”  
  
“Go stick your head in a blighted ash-pit, Ire.”  
  
  
  
Caius Cosades’ face was unreadable. Iriel supposed that came with the job description.  _Auri-El only knows how I’m going to manage being an undercover agent. I’m more transparent than Dibella’s nightgown._

“Your cover identity is… what, exactly?” Cosades sounded like he hadn’t had much sleep. “Freelance dissipated poet?”  
  
Iriel was guiltily aware that he hadn’t entirely sobered up from the night before, but it did have the advantage of inhibiting his fear of the Spymaster.

“I’ll have you know this shirt is made of Ancestor Moth silk,” he retorted. “The best fucking silk in the Empire.” It was indeed. It was a rich and elegant cream colour, and despite the knowledge that he’d inevitably spill something down it before long, Iriel never wanted to take it off. He couldn’t recall ever owning anything so luxurious. It even had flowing cuffed sleeves that, for the first time since he’d left Summerset, weren’t too short in the arm. And a rather low neckline that he was now realising did absolutely nothing to hide the marks from the day before.  
 _  
Fine. Perhaps I am, currently, a touch dissipated. But after the nightmarish time I’ve had on this accursed island, I refuse to apologise for it. If anyone is owed a bit of fucking dissipation, it’s me._  
  
“I’m not a poet,” he said. “I’m a scholar. And I don’t understand why you’ve gone to all this trouble to seek me out and get me off the skooma, but you did, and I’m here, and I’m ready to take the job, if it’s still open. Helende said it was research of some kind?”  
  
“To begin with,” Cosades said, non-committally. “I’ll tell you now, I don’t know why the Emperor wants you for this job so badly, either. But both of us are just going to have to follow our orders. Aren’t we. So. Here are  _your_ orders. Go talk to Hasphat Antabolis at the Balmora Fighters’ Guild. Ask him what he knows about the Nerevarine secret cult and the Sixth House secret cult. You’ll have to do him a favour first. Probably an ugly favour. But do it. Then get the information from Antabolis and report back to me.”  
  
“The… Nerevarine?” Iriel tried very hard to emulate Cosades’ inscrutability, as a ghastly wave of deja vu crashed over him.  
  
The Spymaster nodded, and flicked to a particular page in a notebook on his desk. “Some Dunmer believe that an orphan and outcast, a youth born on a certain day to uncertain parents, will one day unite all the tribes of the Dunmer, drive out the invaders of Morrowind, and reestablish the ancient laws and customs of the Dark Elven nations. They call this orphan and outcast the Nerevarine, and say the Nerevarine will be a reincarnation of the long-dead Dunmer General and First Councilor, Lord Indoril Nerevar.”  
  
  
Outside, Iriel leaned against the wall of an alley near the South Wall, repeatedly casting Calm, but feeling nauseous with stress every time it wore off and he started thinking about it again.  
  
 _What’s going on? Was Julan right? Is the Empire really trying to hunt him down, and hiring me to do it? Over this absurd prophecy? I thought he was just paranoid, but… what now? I have to tell him. But what if he panics, and decides he has to hurl himself up Red Mountain again? I want him to give up on this delusion, not have it corroborated by actual threats! And I don’t know anything for certain. I can’t tell him. I have to tell him. I can’t tell him. Fuck._  
  
Iriel headed for the Balmora Fighters’ Guild, hoping Caius’ contact would be able to shed some light on exactly how much of a hideous shitstorm this job was going to turn out to be.


	56. surprise

“Shor’s balls, you’re finally back!” Sottilde’s face lit up as they came down the stairs of the South Wall. “How’d it go in armpit land?”  
  
“Arkngthand,” corrected Iriel, mildly. “And it was…”  
  
“Great!” Julan was happily bloodstained. “It was full of bandits! And there was a Dwemer telescope, and some of those metal spider things!”  
  
“I was going to say boring,” Ire sighed. “There was very little of interest from a historical point of view.”  
  
“You get the thingy for whoshisface?” Sottilde didn’t believe in remembering words she didn’t plan to use on a regular basis.  
  
“We delivered the Dwemer artifact to Hasphat Antabolis, yes.”  
  
“Good. Got a surprise for you!”

Sottilde wasn’t working, so they took over a table, kicking their bags underneath. Julan shrugged off his armour and stretched, threatening the stitching on the Velothi shirt he favoured, which was slightly too small and so threadbare it was mostly held together by the beading.

“Remember that booze you got for Habasi?” Tilde was grinning dangerously. “Turns out the client only ordered one bottle. She told me to give the other back to you.”  
  
“Really?” said Iriel, pleasantly surprised. “She told me it was an incredibly rare vintage brandy, sought after by collectors and connoisseurs. We could probably sell it for… ooh…”  
  
“Not any more!” She ducked behind the bar and hauled out an enormous earthenware jug. “I made punch!”  
  
“Sweet Mara, Tilde…” Ire watched apprehensively as she carried the brimming jug over and plunked it into the middle of the table. He peered into it and immediately recoiled as the chemical smell scoured his nostrils. “What did you  _do_ to it?”  
  
“Improved it! It’s got comberry juice, a bit of greef… the ends of a few other bottles I found under the bar. I call it a Balmora Sunset.”  
  
“What, because everything goes dark when you drink it? Haven’t you drugged me enough?”  
  
“Balmora Blunt Weapon, more like,” added Julan, but started pouring it into mugs. The concoction was practically viscous, not to mention distressingly purple.  
  
“Are you  _sure_ this isn’t why you were exiled from Skyrim? That’s the worst abuse of alcohol I’ve ever seen.” Ire closed his eyes.  _Am I seriously about to get drunk again, when I’ve barely escaped my last hangover? I really must be dissipated. In my defence, though, I have these terrible friends who keep dissipating me._  
  
  
  
“…An’… an’ then he said: ‘I don’t know, muthsera, I’m only the janitor! Nice arse, though!’ And then… he… he just  _handed_ me my pants, and left!” She was laughing so hard she could scarcely breathe.

“Mine’s worse,” said Iriel, indistinctly. Alcohol always affected him unpredictably, and was numbing and alienating as often as it was socially lubricating. The other two were mildly tipsy, whereas he felt like his thoughts were swimming through glue. His head kept somehow ending up on the table, and due to the stickiness of said table, it then proved difficult to remove. This was not getting any easier as the night went on.  
  
“I saw… this beautiful fucking creature at a party once,” he sighed. “And I spent hours staring at him… drinking too much, trying to psyche myself up enough to talk to him. And then he smiled, and came over, and… I don’t remember what he said, but I must have decided he was flirting, because I… oh gods… I can’t.”  
  
“You have to tell us now!”  
  
“I leaned over and whispered seductively into his ear… no, I can’t tell you. I’ll die.”  
  
“IRIEL.”  
  
“I asked him if he wanted his sock cucking.”  
  
“You what?”  
  
“Yes, thank you Julan, that’s exactly how he stared at me. And then I turned around and walked out of the room and out of the party and never went back. I saw him in the library, a week later, and I dropped all my books and ran.”

Sottilde spluttered. “Yours is  _not_ worse than mine! Anyway, now it’s Julan’s turn. Come on, ‘fess up.”  
  
Julan grimaced, and shifted awkwardly in his chair. “I don’t have any stories that are interesting or funny, just stupid guarshit me and Sh… just stupid teenage guarshit.”  
  
Iriel tried to sit up, and eventually made it. “You were going to say Shani, weren’t you? You said that name last night too.”  
  
“I didn’t! …Did I?”  
  
“Yes, when you fell asleep on Ralen Hlaalo’s bed. You were taking up the whole thing, so I elbowed you, and you rolled over and muttered 'get off me Shani, you blighted nix-bitch’.”  
  
“Charming!” scoffed Sottilde. “Who’s that, then?”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
“That’s why we’re making you,” she retorted. “It must be juicy, if you’re trying to hide it!”  
  
“No! It’s nothing like that, it’s just… it’s not something I… look, she’s my ex, that’s all. And it ended badly, and I don’t feel like getting into it.”

Sottilde ignored his pleas for discretion. “So who was she? How’d you meet her? Were you together long?”  
  
He glowered at her, but sighed and gave in. “She’s Ahemmusa. We grew up together, back when I used to have more contact with the tribe. Before everything got really ugly. And we were a couple for… nearly two years, I guess. On and off. We had that whole forbidden romance thing going on. Sneaking out to met, hiding from our parents. You know. Stupid, teenage, head-in-the-clouds, us-against-the-world stuff.”  
  
“You broke up, though? What happened?”  
  
“Malacath, Tilde, can’t you leave it alone?”  
  
“Where’s the fun in that? Finish your drink, and  _then_ tell me.”

Ire snickered, as Julan locked eyes with her for a moment, then drained the mug. “My mother happened, tha’s what,” he slurred, thick-tongued, as Tilde proffered more toxic cocktail from the jug. “She told me to break it off.”  
  
Sottilde stopped pouring, and looked as if she was seriously considering tipping the contents over Julan’s head. “You broke up with a girl because your  _mother_ told you to?!” She slammed down the jug, rattling the mugs, and Iriel’s teeth. “Are you a man, or a goddamn wet scrib? No wonder you were ashamed to talk about it, ya squirming, slime-bellied kwama-grub!”  
  
“You don’t get it!” There was a screech of wooden protest, as, beginning to rise, Julan knocked into the table. Then he changed his mind, and sat back, his mouth twisting in frustration. “Mother was right,” he said, after a moment. “Not that I understood that right away. I yelled, swore, and told her to bury her head in an ash-pit. We fought for hours. In the end, I left home in a rage. Lived in the mountains for a week, but then the dreams started getting to me. I had a long think about everything, and in the end, I had to face the fact that she was right.”  
  
“This better be good,” growled Sottilde, still holding the jug with a menacing glint in her eye.  
  
“I had– have responsibilities! Duties to my people that mean I have no right getting distracted by personal stuff like that. Shani was holding me back, because I had started to forget my sacred mission, and fool myself that we could have a normal life together. If I really cared about her, I had to leave her and concentrate on training. Anything else would only have hurt her more in the long run.”  
  
“That,” spat Sottilde, “is the biggest load of guarshit I’ve ever heard. Tell him, Ire!”  
  
“Oh no,” mumbled Ire hazily from the tabletop, “I’m staying out of this.”  
  
“Jusss’ leave it.” Julan was more tired then angry. “You don’ understand. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. She’ll never forgive me. Iss’ probably for the best anyway. We would have broken up sooner or later. I jus’ wish things coulda been different.” He regarded his newly-full mug balefully, then began gulping it down, wincing slightly at the taste.  
  
“Well,” announced Sottilde, “that can be the next topic. Worst breakups!”  
  
Julan snorted. “Forget it,” he said. “I already heard Iriel’s, and it’s impossible to beat.”  
  
The bottom three inches of Sottilde’s Jug of Doombrandy were dark and full of terrors, many of them alarmingly chewable. Iriel, already quite as inebriated as he wanted to get, had recoiled in horror. So Sottilde and Julan were doing shots of it, in what was either a drinking contest or a form of aggressive flirtation. Either way, it involved a lot of shouting about who was going to get who under the table.  
  
Iriel told himself he really didn’t care what they did any more, but even aside from the amount he’d drunk, Julan had an angry, self-destructive look in his eyes that Ire had seen often enough to be wary of. He decided intervention was called for.  
  
“Julaaan… I’m so tired. I can hardly walk.” Even without alchemical fortification, the puppy-dog eyes were remarkably effective. “Can you help me get the bags upstairs?”  
  
They wobbled up the second flight of stairs and found their cheap dormitory beds. Julan flung Ire’s bag down, where it burst open, scattering its contents.   
  
“Doesn’ matter,” Ire flapped his hands at the shower of papers and notes. “I’ll pick it all up tomorrrr…” He flopped into the blankets, burrowing until he was comfortable.  
  
As Ire had hoped, Julan was yawning, and eyeing the other bed. “Go to sleeeeep,” he told him. “Don’ go and be stupid wi’ Tilde, come to beeeed.”   
  
Downstairs, he heard a sudden peal of laughter from Sottilde, and a howl of “Sock!! I just got it!!!”  
  
“Uh… yeah. You’re right.” Julan rubbed his head, and began pushing paper off the blankets. Then something caught his eye, and he stopped, examining one of the fallen pages, squinting at the words through the beer-goggles.  
  
“Ugh, stoppit, get off me. What?” Iriel’s eyes were shaken open to find Julan’s mere inches away, full of fury and suspicion.  
  
“Your research notes for Cosades!” he hissed. “Why are they all about the Nerevarine?”  
  



	57. calm

It was a beautiful day in the Ascadian Isles. The sun was breaking through the morning clouds, nix-hounds were chittering gently on the breeze, and the fertile volcanic ecosystem meant there were always flowers of some kind blooming.  
 _  
It’s probably freezing in the Imperial City right now_ , thought Iriel, idly. For the first time, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be back there, and it wasn’t just the weather. He had a job! …sort of. He was seeing someone! …sort of.

He also had a suspicious, grumpy and incredibly hungover Dunmer following him around, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about that. Julan had refused to stay in Balmora, citing boredom and a need for fresh air. Ire suspected it had more to do with his desire to keep tabs on the research Cosades was commissioning, but he had, at least, calmed down since the previous night. 

Fortunately, Cosades’ cover identity as a worn-out old skooma addict was convincing; even Iriel wasn’t sure how much of it was an act. Unfortunately, this only increased Julan’s confusion as to why he was researching the Nerevarine and the Sixth House.  
  
“He pays well,” Ire had said, “and I’m not drawing on any sources that aren’t already public knowledge, so you don’t need to worry. His house is full of history books. Perhaps he’s interested in local folklore.”  
  
Even more unfortunately, what had initially been billed as research now involved trading favours with Cosades’ contacts in exchange for information. Favours like grave-robbing for Sharn gra-Muzgob, a taciturn and shifty-eyed Orc, whom Iriel recalled from his brief tenure as a member of the Balmora Mages’ Guild. She hadn’t liked him then, either, and was now holding her knowledge of Vvardenfell cult practices to ransom, to be released on production of a certain, named, skull from a tomb near Pelagiad.  
  
“How does one even identify a skull?” mused Iriel as they walked south along the river. “Do Dunmer traditional burial practices include ones mother sewing ones name into it? Ugh, why does this job have to involve bones. And what is this local obsession with leaving them lying about everywhere?”  
  
“A  _skull_?” Julan stared at him, suspicion swiftly morphing into outrage. “Wha… I knew it! I knew this wasn’t just about visiting a tomb! You’re there for a SKULL? You’re stealing body parts for that Orc! She’s probably a necromancer! She’s going to use it to bind and torture his spirit for eternity!”  
  
“Gods, why do you have to make it sound so bad?”  
“Because it is!”  
“Don’t help, then!”  
“Fine, I won’t!!”  
  
Iriel regretted this exchange, when the tomb in question turned out to be full of skeletal warriors.  
  
Alone in the darkness beyond the door, he could hear the ossiferrous grinding of bone against bone. He almost hurled himself back into the sunlight where he had left Julan reclining against a rock, cleaning his nails with his dagger-point. He restrained himself. He knew he’d receive no sympathy, and probably a lecture on the ethics of destroying tomb guardians. He flexed his fingers, and dissolved into the shadows.  
  
 _Breathe. If they can’t see you, they can’t hurt you.  
  
_ _But I can see them! Just looking at them is… aaaagh, I cant do it. I can’t. The way they move… and the noise! The clicking, oh gods.  
_ _  
I’m not going back out there empty-handed. The look on his face would be unbearable.  
_ _  
Then we need to find a way to deal with this._  
  
Iriel insinuated his way through the the twisty passages of the tomb, a Sound spell ringing in his ears. Silence was almost as unnerving as the grinding - discordant distraction was better. He was also under the influence of the strongest Calm spell he could muster, and felt… nothing. He was encased in a glorious absence of emotion, swaddled in a warm blanket of absolute zero fucks.  
 _  
_ _Everything Is Absolutely Fine I Am Merely Walking Along A Tunnel Past A Skeleton_.  
  
He was still invisible, so the undead ignored him, going about their lurchy, reanimated business. He stepped over the desiccated body of an unfortunate tomb raider.  
 _  
_ _I Am Stepping Over A Dead Person Right Now, But Everything Is Absolutely Fine._  
  
He located the skull in the lowest chamber, fortunately right where Sharn had told him it would be.  
 _  
_ _I Am Picking Up The Skull For The Probable Necromancer. I Am Touching A Skeleton Headbone With My Actual Finger Skin But Everything Is Absolutely Fine._  
  
The invisibility spell wore off half-way back to the entrance, but the Calm spell was still functioning, which meant he felt no concern over this whatsoever.  
  
 _The Skeletons Are All Turning And Moving Towards Me In An Enormous Bony Horde. This Is Perfectly Absolutely Fine_.  
  
His brain remembered what worked best against undead. He raised his hands dreamily, and, in the absence of any restraining influence warning him otherwise, summoned ALL OF THE FIRE.  
  
Julan figured out that something was wrong when the wooden door of the tomb began to smoke. He touched the handle and yelped at the extreme heat. He was looking around for something to open it with, when Iriel came through it. Nonchalantly, and on fire.  
  
He smiled, and waved to Julan. “Everything Is Absolutely Fine,” he said. Then the flames and smoke overcame him, and he fell to the ground.  
  
  
  
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”  
  
Some time later, Julan was resting from the exertion of casting dozens of healing spells at a frantic and desperate pace, and Iriel was catching up on screaming.  
  
“You’re a blighted idiot,” Julan informed him. ”You’re an Altmer, you’re sensitive to fire at the best of times, what possessed you to… why would it seem a good idea to…”  
  
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”  
  
Julan rubbed his forehead. “How long are you going to do that for?”  
  
Iriel paused for breath. “Until I stop needing to. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

“Did you get what you wanted? After all that?”  
  
Iriel opened his bag, and peered in. “AAAAAAAGH, FUCK, THERE’S A SKULL IN MY BAG!!!” He speared it through an eye socket with the blade of an alchemy-knife, eyes half-closed, and flicked it at Julan. “You carry it, I can’t bear it!”  
  
Julan nodded, too exhausted for further argument. After a moment, he said: “Sorry about your hair, by the way.”  
  
Iriel froze. “What?”  
  
“I healed the burns to your skin, but hair’s not living flesh, so the spell doesn’t work. The ends are pretty crispy. And there’s a bit at the side here where it’s been burned clean away, and you’ve… kind of… got a slight… bald patch.”  
  
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”


	58. love

“No. Get the knife right in underneath the lowest chitin plate. No… here, let me, you’re going to blunt it.”  
  
Julan caught the knife just as Iriel let go of it with a plaintive: “This is unbelievably disgusting.”

“Look, we chose a nix-hound because we both agreed you weren’t up to dealing with anything internally skeletal.”  
  
“Could we not have started with something smaller, like a scrib?”  
  
“A scrib?! What kind of monster are you? Come on, it’s easy. I learned to do this when I was six.”  
  
“You must have been quite the six year old. I don’t have the muscle for this.”  
  
“You don’t  _need_ muscle. If you’re in the right spot, you can just slide all the way in, and get it off really easil– what? Oh, for Azura’s sake.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“D'you even want me to teach you to fend for yourself, or d'you want me to do it, while you sit there giggling at your own filthy mind?”  
  
“Hmmm…” Iriel squinted into the darkening Ascadian sky, pretending this cost him anything at all in the way of consideration. “Definitely the latter.”   
  
Julan began cracking open the carapace in a cacophony of chitinous wrenching.   
  
Iriel shifted well clear, and leaned back on an elbow, next to the fire. “Yes… I definitely prefer this as a spectator sport,” he grinned.  
  
Julan, ripping apart the carcass and carving out flesh, raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was unbelievably disgusting a minute ago.”  
  
“I’m finding it improves, with distance. Aren’t you worried you’re going to get your shirt messy?”  
  
“Get my…?” He lowered the knife. “Iriel… you’re not… getting off on this, are you?”  
  
“Never.”  
  
“You’d better not be, or I’ll make you come back over here and do it.”  
  
“Is that a promise?”  
  
Julan choked back something he would have categorically denied was going to be a laugh, and was opening his mouth to respond appropriately when he stopped, and stared past Ire down the Pelagiad road. “We’ve, uh… we’ve got company.”  
  
She had the fragile-eyed delicacy of a lost fawn, her auburn hair twisted into a complicated knot on the back of her head. Her dress was a confection of red and blue satin, making her shine in the dusk like some exotic flower. She held herself tautly on the edge of the firelight as if she might spill at any moment, gloved hands clasped, looking from one to the other. “Please help me,” she faltered, in a refined Breton accent, “I have just been robbed.”  
  
They brought her over to sit by the fire. She explained that her name was Maurrie, and she had been jumped by a bandit while travelling, although the nature of the help she needed was… unexpected.  
  
“Please, I must find the bandit again,” she said, her voice unsteady with emotion. “He was a dark elf–a strong, dashing dark elf. He didn’t harm me in any way, although he did take my jewels. He was quite gentle, and he talked to me for what seemed like forever. Perhaps you can find him for me? Please, I cannot live without knowing if he could ever love me. I have nothing to offer you in return, but could you not help me for the sake of love?”  
  
Her wide blue eyes filled with tears, and Julan looked stricken. “Don’t cry. Of course we’ll help you. Right?”  
  
He turned to Iriel for support, and didn’t find it. Ire had the grim expression of someone faced with a broken-winged baby bird and the unpleasant knowledge that the greatest mercy they have to offer is a large rock.  
  
“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through,” he said softly. “But you need to understand that you’ve been tricked. You were frightened by a man who threatened your life, and who used that fear to manipulate you. He made you vulnerable, and in that state, when he began being kind, you mistook the relief you felt for love.” It was difficult, but he did his best to look the girl in the eye.  
  
“He’s a thief, Maurrie. He was attracted to you because you had something of value, and now he has it. Even if you found him again, all he’d be thinking is whether you had more jewels somewhere, that he might gain access to. People like that… they don’t love you. You’re only ever as valuable to them as what they can get from you. You have no value to him in yourself. They don’t think that way. Perhaps that’s not their fault, perhaps their lives have been such that they’re not capable of it. I don’t know. But… I know that you  _do_  have value. And you are worthy of love, and of far better than him.” He stood up abruptly, and walked away from the firelight, as she blinked at him.  
  
Maurrie bit her lip, alternately crumpling and smoothing one of her gloves between her fingers. “It is likely true,” she said, at last. “I have been a fool. I apologise for wasting your time. I… should return home now.”  
  
Numbly, she stood, and drew a scroll of Intervention from her skirt pocket. She read it quickly, and vanished, leaving only her teardrops hanging in the air, refracting coloured sparks as they fell to the earth.  
  
“Iriel? She’s gone. Are you all right?”  
  
Ire’s angular figure slowly emerged from the shadows. “Yes. And I’ve changed my mind about helping. Can I cut up the meat? With your big knife?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Julan cleared away the nix-hound remains, and gathered some hackle-lo while Iriel threw himself into his chosen task. After a while, drained and exhausted, he brought his results over to the fire. “We’re having mince now,” he said. “I hope that’s all right.”  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
They wrapped the mince into parcels of hackle-lo and steamed them.  
  
  
“Is it really so impossible that he might have fallen in love with her?” Julan had been gazing at the moons for a while. “Don’t you think it can happen that way? Love at first sight, you know?”  
  
Iriel’s eyes shot him full of withering scorn over a mouthful of hackle-lo. “No,” he said, presently. “You’re referring to a mixture of lust and suicidal optimism.”  
  
“But… you’ve been in love. Didn’t you know it was special, somehow, that… I don’t know. That it was more than just sex, or friendship. How did you know you were in love?”

Iriel grimaced. “I  _thought_  I was in love. I used to think a lot of things. Then I got older, and more bitter, and I realised you can’t trust a lot of what you  _think_  you feel about people.”  
  
“What, even Kaye?”  
  
Iriel sighed. “Kaye is lovely. But I’m not a fool. I’m not hoping for things I’m not likely to get. Right now, I’ll be happy if I can lure him down from the holy realm of the Divines long enough to bed me. Why are you asking about this, anyway?”  
  
“Oh, just… thinking. About Shani, and where it went wrong, and… you’re going to laugh at me, but… I guess I want love to be something more than sex, or friendship or… all that ordinary stuff. Not just bodies, or minds, but… well. Souls, I guess. Love should be different.”  
  
Iriel stared at Julan with a mixture of amusement and surprise. “I had no idea you were such a  _romantic_ ,” he said.  
  
Julan looked mortified. “I am  _not!_  I just want love to be something special. That really could cause you to be changed forever by someone you just met, and… and stop being a jewel-stealing bandit, and become a better person. I want to believe in that.”  
  
“That’s exactly what I mean by calling you a romantic, silly.”

“Oh!” Julan looked embarrassed. “Sorry, I misunderstood what you… I thought you meant I was flirting with you.”  
  
Ire couldn’t stop giggling. “You? Oh, please. I mean, you’re perfectly welcome to try, but…”  
  
“Uhm. No. That kind of thing is really not my, uh.” He rubbed the back of his neck and became very interested in the grass in front of him. “That’s more  _your_  area of expertise.”

“I’m flattered you think I’m any kind of expert, but I should probably explain something,” Iriel said, in soothing tones. “You see… I spend so much time trying to not be obviously gay at people, in case they start getting judgemental, or worse, violent. You’re not the only one who’s ever been punched in the face by aggressive idiots. I’m always trying to censor myself, all the time, and it’s exhausting. It’s difficult, stressful, and I’ve never been any good at it. Invisibility spells are a far easier option.   
  
“So… it means that when I’m with people I trust not to hurt me, or think less of me, who I actually feel safe enough to relax around… I get a little carried away. I’m sorry if I vent my gayness all over you. As it were. But I don’t mean anything by it, except as a sign I consider you a friend. I’m sorry if I embarrass you, or make you uncomfortable, and if it really bothers you, I’ll stop.”  
  
“I… see. Then… um… I mean… it’s fine. I don’t mind.”  
  
  
“It’s so much better when we’re out here,” Julan whispered, just as Ire was hovering on the edge of sleep. “Instead of being in the cities, where you keep getting scared of all the people, and I keep worrying about the Temple, and stupid nosy Imperial researchers.”  
  
Ire nodded, sleepily. “Let’s stay in the wilds for a bit, then. I was thinking when we’re done with this job, we could Recall home to Sadrith Mora, then hike up the coast and through the Grazelands to your mother’s. Assuming you still want to do that.”  
  
“Yeah… yeah, I should get it over with. Let’s take our time getting there, though.”  
  
“As long as we’re back for the Old Life Festival, I don’t mind.”  
  
  
  
“…Hey, Ire.”  
  
“M'asleep. What.”  
  
“There’s a skeleton here!”  
  
“…Mmmph?!”  
  
“Inside you!”  
  
“You’re not even  _slightly_ funny, you know.”  
  
“And… oh no… I think there’s one in me, too! Gah! It’s… it’s moving! It’s coming to get you!”  
  
“If it does, it’ll get a smack.”  
  
“Is that a promise?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Julan Kaushibael, did you just…? Auri-El…”  
  
Laughter.  
  
Sleep.


	59. translate

“Is that Pelagiad over there?” Iriel craned his neck, trying to make out the rooftops in the distance, lying draped in the hazy mist of the early hours.  
  
Julan, six inches shorter and really not a morning person, shrugged and gestured to a wooden sign a short distance up the road.  
  
Ire dutifully investigated. “I was right, it is Pelagiad.” He looked pensive.

“What’s so great about it being Pelagiad? Just another blighted Imperial colony. Must be, if they named it after an Emperor.” Julan kicked at a stone in the road. “I had a guar called Pelagius once,” he added, gloomily.  
  
“Did you really?” said Ire, with an almost complete lack of interest.  
  
“It died.”  
  
“You’re a barrel of laughs this morning. Why does an Ashlander name a guar after an Emperor?”  
  
Julan looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, the guar was a bit mad, see, and I’d just read this book, and… it was funny at the time.”  
  
Ire raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment. “I wondered if it was Pelagiad because I remembered something Sottilde told me. She said Habasi was very upset about Bragor, an old friend of hers who was in the lock-up at Pelagiad, on a trumped-up charge. She was trying to get him out, but hadn’t succeeded.”  
  
“And you want to… what… break him out?”  
  
Ire laughed. “Can you imagine? Hardly. But perhaps we could visit him, see how he is, and tell him Habasi’s working on it.”  
  
“You really want to go all the way over to a stupid Imperial village, just for that?”  
  
“Well, there might be a tavern, too, I suppose.”  
  
“Fine. Tavern first, though.”  
  
  
It was early enough in the day that the only customers in the Halfway Tavern were a handful of people breakfasting. Travellers preparing to move on, and the odd local who thought food preparation was something that happened to other people on your behalf.  
  
In this latter group was an imposing Altmeri man in rather gaudy Imperial Legion armour. Seeing Iriel come in, he slackened his assault on the kwama egg he was besieging and waved him over. Ire glanced around helplessly, hoping against hope that the man meant someone else, but it was no use. Julan was already at the bar, talking animatedly to a tattooed Velothi in a chitin cuirass, and paying no attention to Iriel’s plight.  
  
“Capital!” the man beamed. “So rare to meet a fellow countryman in these parts. Please, won’t you allow me to buy you breakfast in exchange for news of the fair Isles?” _help help help nooooo go away we have nothing in common i can’t tell you anything help.  
_  
The man’s name was Angoril, and it turned out that he was far less interested in obtaining information about current events in Summerset than he was in talking about Summerset to an appreciative audience. Iriel was quite the opposite, but he was getting free food, and listening was better than being expected to talk about things he knew nothing about.  
  
Angoril was, he claimed, an officer at Fort Pelagiad (“Really rather prominent, actually, and certainly the only chap there who knows a damn about anything!”) and he relished an excuse to hold forth about the differences between Legion practices and those of his previous post with the Alinor military.  
  
“Lillandril? Hah!” he brayed at Ire’s brief reply to one of his thankfully-rare questions. “The old rivalry, eh! Ooer, are you going to challenge me?” Ignoring Iriel’s dead-eyed stare, he continued blithely: “Only joking, of course. I’ve known many fine men of Lillandril, and I’d hate to kill any more. What’s your line?”  
  
This was the one Iriel had been dreading, his brain fretting over it almost as much as whether he was eating his crabmeat on toast in a sufficiently heterosexual manner. He managed to finish his mouthful without choking. “No line,” he said. “Exiled.”  _Perhaps he’ll leave me alone now.  
  
_ “An Ouster!” Angoril’s eyebrows leapt, Iriel’s fingers clenched around his fork, but the storm didn’t break. “Naughty naughty, eh?” He wagged a finger under Iriel’s nose, grinning smugly, ignorant of the many fantastical deaths that Ire was devising for him at that moment. “Don’t worry. We’re beyond all that out here, aren’t we? Imperial rules now, all equal under the banner, promotion by merit, all that claptrap.”   
  
He leaned in, conspiratorially. “If you ask me, it causes as many problems as it solves. I’ve got one guard under me that’s a female Orc! Can you believe it? Complete incompetent, of course, couldn’t organise a shit in a ditch, pardon my Argonian. She’s had some damn Bosmer in the cells for months. No idea what for, she hasn’t submitted the paperwork! Auri-El knows if she can even write! Anyway, terribly sorry, but speak of the Daedra and all that. I should get to the Fort before it falls down without me.”  
  
Angoril stood up in a clatter of brass. “Honour and glory, Iriel the Ouster!”  _don’t touch me don’t fucking touch me if you clap me on the shoulder in a manly fashion i will SET you on FIRE– oh thank the aedra he’s gone._  
  
“Where the fuck were you?!” he demanded of Julan, as he brought the other Ashlander over to join the table.  
  
Julan had the decency to look somewhat shamefaced, but moved to introduce his new friend. “This is Yakum. His Tamrielic’s not so good, so he’s happy to meet someone who can understand him, and translate a bit. Yakum, da'eth sa Iriel bel-Lillandril.”  
  
“Not of Lillandril,” Ire said in hollow tones. “I’m an Ouster. I’m not even supposed to claim a loconymic any more, as that atrophied wankstain so kindly reminded me.”  
  
“D'you mind? I’m eating crabmeat, here.”  
  
“That’s  _my_ crabmeat! …but you’re welcome to it. I’m not hungry any more.”

“Wha'ff an Ous'er, a'yway?”  
  
“An outcast, the same as you, I suppose. But it means being casteless, which is a big deal in Summerset. For example, it comes with the added exciting benefit that people of caste are supposed to ignore you. They literally pretend Ousters are invisible. My mother used to campaign against that sort of thing. She was very vocal about it. Used to try and make me smile at them in the street as some kind of political protest.”  
  
He jabbed the fork he was still holding into the table experimentally, but the wood resisted penetration. “I used to rather envy them their invisibility. Even if it didn’t work on my mother - but then, nothing works on my mother.”  
  
Julan, shovelling crabmeat, nodded sympathetically.

“One good thing did come out of having to talk to that vacuous pusbucket - it sounds like Bragor’s in the jail, and the guard who brought him in hasn’t recorded him officially. Perhaps with the right incentive, she might let him go.”  
  
“Maybe. Look, can you ease off on the weird insults, they’re impossible to translate into Velothi for Yakum.”  
  
Ire sighed. “Never mind. You two carry on talking about guar, or whatever you have the fucking vocabulary for. I’m going to see if they have anything approaching decent bittergreen tea in this place.”  
  
At the bar, waiting for his tea to steep, a slim Khajiiti woman in a simple yet elegant robe sidled up to him. “Ahnassi listens, sweet,” she purred into his ear. “Ahnassi hears. The beautiful Altmer wishes for dirt on the Orcish guard, does he not?”  
  
Iriel hesitated. He was reasonably certain he was being hit on, but that was actually preferable to a situation where he wasn’t sure. Still, he was wary of offending her with a polite rejection too soon, as it sounded like she might have useful information. “Yeeees?” he ventured.

“Ahnassi knows that the Orc, Shadbak gra-Burbug, takes bribes from someone. Is that not a juicy titbit? Is this not a fine gift that Ahnassi offers to share with…?”  
  
“Um. Iriel.”  
  
“Irrrrriel.” Her pointed teeth glinted as she rolled the Rs, then lightly flicked her tongue across them for the L, her golden eyes fixed on his all the while. “Ahnassi has many more secrets to share with Iriel, if he will be her new friend. Sharing gifts and sharing secrets is what friends do, yes?”  
  
“Well, possibly… but I really don’t think I can promise to, um,  _share_ anything specific. Do you know who the Orcish guard is taking bribes from?”

“Var, var, var. You twist Ahnassi’s arm, and Ahnassi gives in, because she is weak as a kitten when she looks at you. And so Ahnassi will share that Shadbak takes bribes from Mebestien Ence, the trader, to ignore that he buys and sells illegal Dwemer artifacts. Does this fine gift make Iriel happy?”  
  
“Very happy, thank you. But you see–”  
  
“Oh, Ahnassi sees. How can Ahnassi not see? Must she be blind? She sees you walk, and she likes what she sees. And what Khajiit can see what she wants, and not take it? Ahnassi has already given Iriel a gift. Could Ahnassi ask for a gift? Don’t say ‘no’ to Ahnassi. Must Ahnassi be the thief? Must she steal this thing, this Iriel fellow she wants? Or will he give himself as a gift?”  
  
  
“Julan.” Iriel gripped the table edge. “How do you say, 'I have a boyfriend’ in Tamrielic?”  
  
Julan stared at him in confusion. “You… just did.”  
  
“Then why the fuck doesn’t that Khajiiti girl understand when  _I_ say it?!”


	60. lower

“You can’t prove anything.” Shadbak set her jaw like concrete, tusks jutting firmly across her upper lip.  
  
“I don’t need to,” Iriel retorted. “I had breakfast with your boss Angoril this morning. He said you were incompetent, and he was only waiting for the right excuse to get rid of you.”  
  
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”  _No, I’m using that overpromoted arse-scab’s racism as a blunt instrument against you, which is worse. Congratulations, Iriel, you’re part of the problem._

“His exact words were: ‘that damn Orc couldn’t organise a shit in a ditch, pardon my Argonian’.”  
  
“Mauloch’s fist! That does sound like him.” She made a noise like a mountain with indigestion. “Fine, you got me,” she said eventually. “Whaddya want?”  
  


The cells were deep underground, down endless stone stairs and along torch-lit corridors running far beneath Fort Pelagiad. Iriel shivered. He had had enough of jails for a lifetime, and only wanted to get out. Bragor’s cell was at the far end, but by the time he reached it, he felt so nauseous, he had to pass the key to Julan, motioning him to do the honours. He should have stayed upstairs. The atmosphere was more than he could take. He leaned a hand on the stonework, trying to ground himself in its cold stability.  
  
Dimly, he heard Julan’s voice, and the sound of a door swinging open. After a moment, a blond Bosmer walked past him, with a nod and a crooked smile. “Thanks, pal. I’m gonna have to lay low for a while, but you give my best to Habasi when you see her. Tell her New-Shoes says the rope’s only for show. Then she’ll know I’m OK.” He disappeared up the stairs.  
  
As Iriel walked unsteadily back along the row of cells, he noticed one was occupied. He couldn’t see the man’s face, only his bare chest through the small barred window, as he lay on the bedroll along the back wall. Nevertheless, Ire’s breath stopped in his throat, and he jerked backwards to stare into the cell. He knew that chest. He had licked powdered sugar off those nipples, down in the long grass behind a monument on Green Emperor Way. The ribs were more visible than they used to be, but some things you couldn’t forget. Gods knew he’d tried.  
  
“Reu?”  
  
The man twitched, flailed an arm, and sat up, his face coming into view, sleep-wreathed and blinking. Reuben was mostly Imperial, but part enigma, he used to say, part whatever his father had been. He changed the story he told about his mysterious progenitor depending on his mood - an Orc, when acting tough, a Breton when trying unsuccessfully to sweet-talk a dubious Iriel into teaching him some magic. Ire was pretty sure Reu had no idea of the truth, and in any case, enjoyed the flexibility of identity it gave him. In all honesty, he was probably full Cyrodiil, judging by his brutalist jawline, and short, stocky build, but Ire hadn’t minded humouring him, once upon a time.  
  
“Wh’d ya want? I’m not due for nothing, am I? I haven’t…” He scratched his head, dislodging visible lice from his matted black hair. His eyes struggled to focus past the bars, suspicion solidifying into his voice as he wakened. “You’re not the regular. Who are you?”  
  
Ire swallowed, and stepped back. He had spent so much time thinking of this moment, not knowing how, or if, it would ever happen, and how he would react if it did. The banality of the reality took him by surprise, short-circuiting his expected responses. He would have bet good money that he’d scream and run away in tears, but he felt no immediate compulsion. His brain was a wheel of fortune, spinning frantically but surrounded by still anticipation, the crowd holding its breath to see which section the needle would finally rest upon.  
  
 _He doesn’t know who I am. I could stay out of sight, disguise my voice, pretend to be an official. I could ask him anything, get him to…_ The needle stopped.  
  
 _…Fuck that._  
  
He returned to the window and gripped the bars, knuckles white. “It’s Iriel, you festering dickscrape! Why the fuck are you here? Can I not even put the seas between us, now?”  
  
Reuben stared for a full ten seconds. Then he started to laugh. Not a cruel laugh, but a laugh Iriel had heard a hundred times. Bubbling lasciviously out of the darkness next to him, as they reeled through the midnight streets, fingers locked together. Warm in his ear on a bar rooftop at three in the morning, retelling someone else’s joke and getting the punchline wrong. It felt positively blasphemous to hear it now. “What the fuck are you laughing at?” he hissed.  
  
“I’m happy to see you!”  
“What? Why?!”  
“I can’t be?”  
“No!!”  
  
Reuben rolled off his pallet and came to the bars, his hands reaching for Iriel’s - who immediately snatched himself away as if he’d been burned. “Don’t touch me!”  
  
Reuben’s grin was still manic and puppyish, although it had lost a couple of teeth since Ire had last seen it. “I can’t believe I get to see you again.”  
  
“How… How dare you even think that! How  _dare_ you be happy to see me, when you should be scared I’m going to kill you for what you did to me!”  
  
“Aww, Irieee, don’t be like that.” His thick eyebrows drooped like caterpillars undergoing a trial separation.  
  
“Don’t… be…!!??”  
  
“It was just one of those things, you know? I din’t think they’d really send you down for it. Not  _you_.”  
  
“I… you… the  _knife_ , Reu!”  
  
“I got scared, yeah? I din’t mean to hurt the old man. He surprised me. I din’t think you’d really take the fall, I just thought it’d confuse 'em all long enough for me to get clear and–”  
  
“Shut up.  _Shut up_. I’m not interested in your stories any more. I don’t need explanations, or excuses, or pretty lies. Just tell me one thing. Did the others know? Gaela and Merisse, were they in on it too?”  
  
“You kidding me?” He stared at Iriel, his blue eyes genuinely dumbfounded. “Why the shit d'ya think I had to skip out of the whole o’ fuckin’ Cyrodiil? They tried to slaughter me when they found out! Gaela put six arrows in my ass before I escaped! Merisse did that creepy knife licking thing she does, and told me if she ever caught me, she’d make me eat my own eyeballs! With cutlery, she said!”  
  
“Cutlery? That  _would_ be cruel and unusual punishment for you, true.”  
  
Something flickered briefly in Reu’s eyes at that, then was gone. “You don’t wanna know anything?” he whined. “About what happened to the amulet, how I crossed the border, or how I got put in here, or–”  
  
“Nope,” said Ire crisply, and stepped back from the window. “Goodbye, Reu. I hope prison is as  _reformative_ for you as it was for me.”  
  
“HEY!” He reached through the bars, desperate, pleading. “You’re never gonna leave me! You let that other guy out, I heard you!”  
  
“Well, the thing is, he’s worth something to me.”  
  
“IRE!!” Seeing Iriel turn away, his eyes darkened as his brows reconvened, and his voice ached with bitter frustration. “Fuck you! Maybe you’ve got nothing to say to me any more, but I got things to say to you! I told you, back then, how it was for me. I never wanted your pity, but you knew how it was for me. Every way out I was ever gonna have from that life was gonna cost me more than I’d ever have.  
  
“You never understood what it meant to be trapped that way, because you’ll never have  _nothing_. You’ll always have your brain, that fancy education you were so keen to show off to me. Shit, you told me your folks threw you out, but they still sent you cash every month, din’t they? Because it’d be even more shameful for you to  _lower_ yourself, right?

“Me, I’m used to lowering myself. I started out low, and pretty soon I couldn’t get much further. And you liked that, once, coming down to my level for a night or two. Not where anyone could see, of course. Even gave me that fuckin’ invisibility charm, din’t you, you got so worried someone important might see me with you. So I knew, din’t I, that it wasn’t worth askin’ you to come with me. That what we had wasn’t a real thing to you, I was just a bit o’ rough fun till the thrill wore off, and you went back to where you were meant to be. Where you belonged.”  
  
Ire’s nails were carving red moons into his palms. "But where DID I fucking go, Reu? You tell me where I went, and whether I belonged there!”  
  
“You got out though, din’tcha? Or you wouldn’t be here! See, I knew they’d go easy on you.”  
  
“You… You have  _no idea_ what I–!!”  
“D'ya wanna hit me? You should, I deserve it.”  
“You just want me to open the door.”  
“Ah, c'mon. You know you wanna hit me. C'mon, Irie.”  
“No.”  
“C'mon.”  
“No!”  
  
“Please.” His anger spent, Reuben clung to the bars, sobs shaking out of him. “I jus’ want you to touch me again.”  
  
“I can’t.” __  
  
After an agonising moment, Ire dipped into his bag, and pushed a scroll of Divine Intervention through the bars. “That’ll get you outside. From there, you’re on your own. Leave Vvardenfell. I’m never going to see you again.”  
  
Reuben nodded, and unrolled the scroll with fumbling fingers, his lips moving as he struggled with the unfamiliar words. His eyes met Iriel’s for a fraction of a second before the spell took hold. Then he disappeared.   
  
“So… uh…” Julan peeled himself off the wall he’d been leaning on, and came over. “When I realised who it was, I was going to ask if you wanted me to run him through or anything, but… it looked like you had everything under control.”  
  
Ire blinked at him, dazed. “I… I did, didn’t I?” His hands started trembling, and his bag slipped to the ground. “I’m going to fall apart now.”  
  
“OK.”  
  
He fell apart.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Bragor’s message to Habasi is a nod to [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2485154) that struck me as a nice headcanon to adopt for their friendship


	61. better

Iriel padded softly into the kitchen, where he found Helende alone at the table, scanning reports.  
  
She smiled when she saw him. “Look who’s home! I thought I heard you and Ashland Pride clattering through the door last night. Got that Grandmaster’s Retort for me yet, Blackcap?”  
  
Ire took a moment to respond. “Oh… yes,” he said, blinking slowly, “yes… it’s in my room. Shall I fetch it?”

“Later is fine. I trust you. I’m sure an honourable alchemist like you wouldn’t be thinking of swiping it for yourself, would you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
She pursed her lips at his vacant tone. “Really not up for light-hearted banter this morning, are you?”  
  
“Sorry, I… didn’t sleep.” Seeing her expression, he flailed a hand at her vaguely, shaking his head. “Please don’t tell me to eat something, because I can’t. I honestly can’t, and I’ll be sick if–”  
  
“All right, keep your hair on. …What. What did I  _say?_  Oh, for… Come here.” She gathered him up and steered him into a chair. “Take this. I’ve been using it to grease lockpicks, but it’s absorbent, and the closest thing I have to a handkerchief right now. So, food is out. How do you feel about tea?”  
  
He nodded weakly, pressing the cloth into his treacherously unstable eyes.  
  
  
  
“I know you’re upset, but it’s not  _that_  bad. And it’ll grow out, yes?”  
  
She tried to look encouraging, but Iriel only sighed. “It’s not about my hair. Honestly, that’s the least of my problems. I don’t know why it set me off again.”  
  
“You’re really not all right, are you? Out with it, then.”  
  
He frowned into his tea, searching for a loose end to even a single one of the many threads of guilt and worry he had spent the whole night winding and unwinding, until they were tangled around his brain in a horrendous mass of anguish. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Helende, he just didn’t know the words that would allow him to begin unspooling it all and laying it in neat coils before her.  
  
“Do you like being an Altmer?” he said, at last.  
  
She looked at him oddly. “I don’t follow the question.”  
  
Ire twisted the mug in his hands, chewing the inside of his lip. “I’m beginning to hate it,” he said. “It was one thing, listening to all that stuff about our innate superiority, when I was back ho– back in the Isles. I could laugh at it, then, because it seemed so improbable. Based on myself and most of the people I knew, at any rate. But… it didn’t mean anything, in real terms, because virtually everyone I ever interacted with was Altmeri too.  
  
“It’s different, now. Both Cyrodiil and Morrowind are full of people who utterly disprove the idea that Altmer are anything special, that we aren’t exactly as intelligent and cultured… and vulgar, and stupid and embarrassing as any other race. And yet there are Altmer around who get away with using their self-proclaimed elite status to set themselves over others. Some people buy into the idea of Altmeri superiority, without us even trying! This Khajiiti girl I met kept telling me I was pretty, when I know perfectly well I’m, at best, average looking on a good day - and  _that_  day, I looked like I’d been sweeping a lit chimney full of enraged rats! Our culture is so fucking dominant that we’ve fooled everyone into thinking we’re all naturally beautiful, when all we’ve done is define beauty by ourselves!  
  
“What’s more… I find I’ve still absorbed it, whether I wanted to, or not. The elitism, the assumptions, the prejudice. Sometimes it’s purely internal. The feeling that my degradation and failure are worse than other people’s, because I ought to be better, be held to a higher standard. But other times I catch myself using it against people. Sneering at them, enjoying the pretence of being intellectually superior, even though I know it’s an illusion, and nothing to do with my race, it’s just…  _education_. Which we consider to be a great asset, of course, but it’s just… knowing things. Knowing long words, knowing a million useless things I’ve stuffed into my head over the years that don’t make me better than anyone else.  
  
“But it’s all I’ve got, all I have to cling to, and so I use it to make myself feel better, by pushing others down. I do it to Julan, I’ve seen myself. And I… I did it to Reu. I made him feel inferior. Because I wanted to impress him so much, and I never thought… He was always so full of confidence, I never imagined it was even possible to dent him. But it was my fault the whole time. I fucked it up all by myself. Everything that happened, would never have happened, if I had been less selfish, If I’d just had enough fucking empathy to… to… see outside myself.”  
  
Helende exhaled and regarded him sceptically. “I don’t know if that’s true, and neither do you. I know that ‘what if’s are a waste of time you could be spending making sure you don’t make the same mistake twice. And unless they’ve invented something on Artaeum and forgotten to send me a memo, none of us are mind-readers, so it’s silly to beat yourself up for that. Even if you  _were_ self-absorbed, it doesn’t excuse what he did.”

“I… know that. I’m trying to hold on to knowing that. But I… I spent so long having absolutely no idea why someone I thought loved me would do that to me. All I could conclude was that I must have deserved it somehow, but without knowing why, I couldn’t get rid of it. It became this immense, shapeless mass of self-loathing I was carrying around, periodically getting crushed by it, or overbalancing and spilling it all over innocent bystanders. And… I was beginning to think I could finally see ways to get out from under it, but… it’s not that easy. Because I can see it more clearly now, and it’s  _not_  formless. It’s an immense conglomeration of a thousand individual flaws, faults and fuckups that have to be chipped away one by one, and wrestled with, and… how do I even begin to…”  
  
He gazed mournfully into space. “I’m just so sick of myself. So sick of being stuck with myself, trapped in my head with all my horrible shit.”

Helende’s mouth pulled briefly tight, then softened. “Iriel, if you want to be a better person, start being one. I’m not convinced a lack of self-awareness has ever been your problem, what you need is willpower. But that’s the  _hard_ part, isn’t it?”  
  
She wasn’t mocking him, although he had to stare at her, to be sure. She stared back, her eyes pale-gold and quite serious. “It  _is_  hard,” she repeated. “And you need to stop expecting perfection, from anyone. But until you start really trying, you’re going to keep hurting people and wallowing in self-hatred. Which are two heads of the same nasty creature, and they’ll keep feeding each other forever, if you can’t prevent them. Still off the skooma?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Good,” she said. “You’re doing better than you think.”


	62. blood

“I have something to tell you,” Helende said, when Iriel’s second cup of tea was almost cold. “But since you’re having a bad day, it can wait.”  
  
“Are you finally going to promote me to Operative?” he asked, clawing his way towards an air of levity. She snorted. “I told you, that isn’t happening until you can at least open a simple lock.”

“I  _can_ open a simple lock. A complex one, even.”  
  
“No, you cannot, you can cast a spell, and that won’t wash in my guild. You’ll do it properly, or not at all. I have my reputation to think of! Stars, at this rate, Julan’s going to make Operative before you do.”  
  
Ire laid the back of his hand against his forehead in mock-horror, then leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin on interlaced fingers. “Tell me your news,” he said. “I’d rather get over with now than have another day ruined later. Right now, it can’t make me feel any worse.”  
  
“Don’t be so sure,” she muttered, fidgeting with her paperwork and avoiding his gaze. “I’m afraid I made a very silly mistake, when talking to an old friend I thought could be trusted to keep their lip buttoned. ‘Do you remember Cinteril?’ I said, 'You’ll never believe how  _her_ son turned out!’ I know, I’m sorry. I had no right to talk about you, and on my honour, I said you were splendid, just not at all what Cin hoped for. Which, as you know, is a compliment.”  
  
Iriel was frozen, fingers enmeshed together so tightly he seemed about to fuse the bones. “Why are you telling me this?”  
  
“Because I’m afraid the dreaded ex-pat Altmeri grapevine has been at work.” Helende went over to a drawer, and unlocked it with a complicated motion of the pick she always had ready, in her sleeve. She took out a thick scroll, sealed with wax, and held it out to Iriel. “This arrived, while you were gone. It’s from her, isn’t it?”  
  
He forced himself to look at it. His mother’s old noble seal, which she had always refused to stop using, her perfect copperplate handwriting shaping his name. Paper she had touched, and deliberately sent to him. “She knows where I am,” he said, aiming for an accusatory tone, but it turned to hollow numbness in his mouth.  
  
“I know,” Helende said, miserably. “I’m truly sorry. I promise, if she ever turns up here, I will personally slap her silly before she gets near you.”

He shook his head. “She’d never do that. She’d never come here. But it’s bad enough she knows… knows  _anything_ … oh  _gods_.” Everything was tainted by the mere presence of this roll of paper. He stared at it. “What should I do?”  
  
“It might contain something important. It’s pages and pages long - look at it! You probably shouldn’t just ignore it.” She rested a reassuring hand on his, but he flinched away and wrapped his arms around his chest.  
  
“I can’t read it. I can’t let her in. I don’t care what she has to say to me, I  _can’t_.” He was clammily pale, and starting to hyperventilate.  
  
Helende looked grim. “It was a mistake to tell you. I’m getting Erer, you need–”

“No!” He jerked forwards, and she removed the mug from his vicinity before he knocked it over. “I don’t need him, I can… I can do it myself.”  
  
Swallowing hard, he cast a Calm spell, modulating it carefully until he could breathe more slowly, giving him precious moments of clear thought. In that borrowed bubble of temporary tranquillity, he came to a decision.  
  
“I want you to open it and read it for me,” he said. “Please. And tell me anything you think I should know, and none of the rest. And then burn it.”  
  
She locked eyes with him for a moment, then nodded. She carried the scroll off to the basket chair in the corner that Erer Darothril usually occupied, and stayed there for half an hour, while Iriel fretted and wove cantrips over and over between his fingers. Eventually, she returned and stood beside him, bowstring-tense.  
  
“There were actually  _three_ things in there,” she said. Her face was rigidly impassive. “The first was a letter. You were right. You don’t want to know what it said.”  
  
He knew he shouldn’t ask, but he did. “None of it?”  
  
She shook her head, lips pressed tightly together. “I’m sorry. I was quite wrong, she hasn’t mellowed at all.” It was almost undetectable, the slight movement at the corner of her mouth. “Took me right back, it did, reading that.”

Ire was stricken by a fresh stab of guilt. “Oh gods, Hel, I should never have made you read it. I just didn’t  _think_ , yet again, fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I–”  
  
She waved his apologies away, the confident swagger returning to her voice as if it had never left. “No, no, no, don’t you start that. You asked me to read it, I agreed, and I’d do it again. Will, if she sends more. I’m fine. My days of caring what people like her think are long gone, therefore shielding you from it is my job, and I won’t hear otherwise.”  
  
He chewed his lip, but nodded. “You said the letter was only one part. What about the rest?”  
  
“I’ll show you.”  
  
She laid them out on the table, one by one: complicated genealogical charts, alchemical blood analysis reports and family trees with births, marriages and deaths plotted back for hundreds of years. He didn’t need to study them, he knew exactly what they were. He had seen it all so many times he’d even learned to repress the urge to scream and run out of the room.  
  
“Auri-El… it’s my bloodline.” His mother used to pore over it until late into the night. Sometimes, she would explain it to him, especially the final sheet, with the various possibilities for his marriage, and the likely positive traits that might be bred into the children of such unions. There was Firionwe’s name at the top of the list, now scratched out so angrily the paper had torn.  
  
“This is why we have to eliminate the caste system and achieve social equality,” she’d often said to him. “The bloodline is what really matters, but we’ve forgotten that, and caught ourselves up in structures that only serve to prevent the best matches from happening. That’s why I made it my mission to defy my caste and marry your father, and that’s why we’ll ensure you marry Firi.”  
  
“I used to worship her, you know,” he said softly to Helende, his lilting Lillandril accent emerging more strongly in response to hers, and the childhood reminiscence he was drifting into. “She was so strong, my ma. She always seemed to know what was right, and how to fight for it. She was the kind who’d march into school and tell the teacher off for punishing me, because I wasn’t  _disobedient_ , just  _sensitive_ , and what kind of training did they have that they couldn’t recognise that? I mean, she was a teacher herself. You remember that little class she had? That was her thing, you know… education for children of every caste. Emancipation through education. No wonder they let me into the Tower, they probably just wanted her to stop writing letters. Gods… she could get anything she wanted, when she set her mind to it. Until I came along. I always wondered what would have happened if she had been able to accept me. It seemed very unfair that she could fight so hard to defend so many things, but never that.”  
  
He stared at the arrangements of names, lines and blood-sigils until his eyes lost focus. “Why’s she sending all this to me now?”  
  
Helende passed him the final sheet of paper. “I think it’s connected to this. A family excommunication, to go with your new title. Congratulations.”  
  
He read the bureaucratic legalese, written in an authoritarian hand on an austere, unornamented sheet of paper.  _…by order and proclamation of High Kinlord… individual hitherto identified as… thereby irrevocably and permanently… all blood-rights, kin-bonds and associated…  
_  
He began shaking with dry, brittle laughter, as the paper fell from his fingers like a dead leaf. “It’s finally official! I’m an Ouster! Can we have another cake? I want to have a party!”  
  
When he said that, she knew he was becoming hysterical again. “Shhh, it’s all right. We’ll lock it all away in the drawer again, and you can take your time to decide what you want to–”  
  
“Oh, I’ve decided! We’re going to burn it. All of it.”  
  
“Iriel.” She made him steady his flickering eyes for a moment and look at her. “You mustn’t. The letter, fine. But the rest you will  _need_ , if you ever want to return to Summerset. It may not be pleasant, but these documents are your legal status, your official identity. Without them, you won’t exist at all.”  
  
He grinned at her. “Exactly! Isn’t it wonderful?”  
  
She shook her head. “I can’t let you do it.”  
  
“You can’t stop me!” he said ecstatically. “You’re not my mother!” Abruptly, he hugged her. “I wish you were. You should be. But right now, you’re not, and I’m going to do this. Don’t you understand? I can leave it all behind - my blood, my family, my country and all the stupid labels they want to put on me!”  
  
“Can’t you do that without reckless gestures involving fire? You’re only making things harder for yourself.”  
  
“Why? I’m never going back. They don’t want me, I don’t want them. I can lay it to rest, remove it from consideration. It’s over! The Iriel of Lillandril experiment has been a colossal failure! I’m throwing it out, I’m taking what I’ve learned, and I’m starting all over again.”  
  
“All right. All right.” She furrowed her brow. The kitchen had a stove, but no fireplace. “Just you hold off on the fireballs until I get something to cover the table. Muriel’ll have kittens if we start a bonfire on her precious Daggerfall oakwood.  
  
When she returned, she had a large metal tray, and another pile of papers which she placed on the table, face-down.  
  
"What are those?”  
  
“ _My_  documents.” She shrugged. “What? I’m not going back. And they’ve got the wrong name on them, anyway. If we’re having a blood sacrifice, let’s make it a big one. First, however, we are going to make the cake for the party afterwards.”  
  
He giggled. “We?”  
  
“Yes, we! I’m going to teach you how. Somebody has to!”  
  
“Because I’m a poor motherless orphan, you mean?”  
  
“Possibly. But also because it’s a vital skill in this guild, and if you can learn it, I may yet allow you to make Operative.” She looked up as the kitchen door opened. “Oh, praise the Aedra, the Ashlander’s finally awake! Julan, if you’ve eaten all my comberries, I will personally skin you. Then send you out for more, in your naked bones. Pass me that jar!”  
  
Even though he spent most of it in tears of one kind or another, Iriel always considered it the one party of his life that he ever completely enjoyed.


	63. needs

The table was strewn with ash and cake crumbs. Iriel’s eyelids were heavy, although he’d wisely avoided the wine, leaving it to the others. Now, Helende had gone to bed, and he was left with only Julan for company, who was frowning and doodling on the table in an rancid-looking mixture of ashes and shein.

“I don’t have anything to burn,” he said, apropos of nothing. Ire wasn’t sure what to make of his tone of voice, which, while mostly neutral, contained traces of puzzlement, and even disappointment.  
  
“That’s good,” Iriel replied. “That’s because you still have people and places you have a connection to.”

“I guess.”

Ire grinned, and nudged him. “Aww, are you feeling left out? Haven’t alienated yourself from enough people to join the family-burning conflagration celebration? Poor thing.”

“They tried to burn her a couple of years ago,” Julan said distantly. “My mother, I mean. They came from Ahemmusa camp, with torches and spells, and were going to set fire to her yurt while she was in it.” His finger sketched a crude dome shape on the wood, then obscured it with jagged scribbles. “I was on my way back from hunting when I heard all the shouting. I was almost too late.”

“What made them suddenly decide to burn her?”

“It doesn’t matter!” He was angry, now, his words blowing flakes of ash across the table. “Lies, more lies, always new, and always the same! Blaming her for things she had nothing to do with - a lost pregnancy, a sick guar! She’s just… different, and they punish her for it.”

“You saved her life, then?”

“Not really. I remember standing in front of the yurt, holding my sword against people I knew, that I’d grown up around. I didn’t know if I could really fight them, but I’d never seen such hate and fear on their faces before. Most of them weren’t warriors, they were herders, tanners, old people. But there were enough of them that they would have killed us both, if Shani hadn’t escaped and thrown herself in front of me, and then Sha’s dad had to throw himself in front of her, and then it got really awkward, and they all went home, with vague threats of death if they saw either of us near Ahemmusa camp again.”

“It was still brave of you.”

“No it wasn’t! I didn’t even think, everything I did was automatic. It wasn’t a choice I made, I just… I had to protect her. She never even knew she was being attacked. When I went into the yurt, she was unconscious, in one of her sacred trances. She was completely defenceless, anything could have happened. She needs me, and she doesn’t have anyone else.”

“But you left. You’re here now.”

“That’s different.”

“Did she tell you to go to Red Mountain?”

“No! She forbade me, in fact, said I wasn’t ready. That’s why I don’t want to go back and admit she was right again! Gah… but she’s always right, and I need her advice. Sheogorath…”

“But… if she forbade it, why were you trying to do something as ludicrous as assault Red Mountain? Were you arrogant enough to think that you were capable?”

His mouth twisted, as he dodged the question. “I just couldn’t stay there any longer,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t be going back at all, if it weren’t my only option.”

Ire didn’t push it. “Do you still want to leave tomorrow?”

“We’ll have to, if you want to be back in time for your big date. It takes days to get that far up the coast and across the Grazelands, especially if we avoid Zainab territory, which we should.”

“You’re the expert.” Ire surveyed the kitchen, grimly. “As my first act as an official ex-citizen of Summerset and a nationless free agent, I’m going to clean up my own mess.”

“Good for you.”

“And you’re going to help.”

“Wha…ugh, fine. Hey, what should I call you, if you’re not Iriel of Lillandril any more? Iriel of Vvardenfell?”

Ire paused in the act of picking up a plate. “That has a certain ring to it, but no, I don’t think so. Loconymics usually refer to smaller areas, cities, usually. It depends. Some Altmer use family names, too. But I don’t feel strongly enough about anything to decide. For now, just Iriel is fine.”


	64. interests

“I should know better than to ever go into ancestral tombs,” muttered Iriel, folded into the corner of the ceiling like a spider. To be fair, he hadn’t originally intended to. They’d been water-walking through the islands north-west of Sadrith Mora, taking a scenic route towards the Grazelands and Julan’s mother’s camp. But he’d been surprised ( _I can’t escape them, Auri-fucking-El_ ) by a skeletal sentry just outside, and, well. Suddenly, being on the other side of the tomb door had appeared the better proposition.  
  
Now, he found himself invisible and levitating into the upper corner of a fortunately high-ceilinged tomb, hoping the Golden Saint below would give up and go away before he ran out of magicka. He had already made the mistake of throwing a spell at her, only to have it reflect off and almost kill him.

He watched her stride back and forth below him, shaking her glass stormsword and making noises like an angry cheesegrater. She knew roughly where he was, but couldn’t reach. Then he heard footsteps approaching, and the Saint paused, listening.  
  
“Iriel? You can come back outside now, it’s deaaAAAAArgh!” Julan barely had time to raise his shield as a blur of gold metal and green glass rushed towards him. He didn’t stand a chance, and Iriel knew it. He had time to cast one spell.  
  
  
“Will you stop levitating me without warning, you blighted n'wah!!” Julan bounced against the ceiling, and flailed wildly at Iriel for support.  
  
“She was about to turn you into scrib jelly! Now keep still–aagh! Stop grabbing hold of me, I’m trying to–!”  
  
“How do you keep still without holding on? I’m floating, for Azura’s sake, I can’t control where my body’s going!!”  
  
“It’s not physical, it’s mental! Find your inner equilibrium!”  
  
“My  _what?!_ ”  
  
“Think still thoughts!”  
  
  
“She’s not giving up, is she?” Arrows were useless, even if Julan had been able to balance long enough to aim.  
  
Iriel downed a potion of magicka. “No,” he said, “but I have an idea. I’m not sure I can cast it though, it’s not exactly my usual field. I’ve never even tried, until now. Oh gods, how did it start…?”  
  
Erer Darothril had taught him the syllables one night, grinning impishly over a mug of greef. “You  _could_  combine it with a charm spell, if you were feeling bored and foolhardy,” he had said, “They’re rarely unwilling. But I’m sure you’re  _far_  too ethical for that. Right?” Ire had almost choked on his drink, wondering if he had the nerve to call the greatest Illusion mage in Vvardenfell a dirty old man.  
  
There was a flash, and a sound like Molag Bal expelling a lollipop. The Dremora furrowed his obsidian brow in confusion, looking for the spellcaster who dared summon him from the depths of Oblivion.  
  
A voice came from on high. “Mara’s arse, it worked! Oh fuck, what do I do? I suppose I should… um… Hello. I’m up here.”  
  
A pair of blood-red eyes swivelled towards the ceiling. Dremora always look scornful, but this one was really working to make his expression the apex of disdain. No doubt he would have rolled his eyes if they hadn’t already been cast upwards.  
  
“Um… thank you for coming,” quavered Iriel.

 _Summoning is such a fucking nightmare. Like knocking on people’s doors, only worse, because they’re forced to answer. So awkward and rude, and what if they were busy, and you interrupted, and ughghgh._  
_  
_ Ire wasn’t sure what Dremora did in their free time, but if pushed, he would have guessed he had interrupted this one while dressing. Or perhaps they always looked that way. He had to confess a lack of experience in the matter.

“Get on viz it,” the Dremora growled, in a voice like molten lava. He indicated the Golden Saint, who was getting over her surprise, and rattling her shield menacingly. “I am Zharkk. You vant me to kill her?”  
  
“Yes!” exclaimed Iriel, “Please. If you wouldn’t mind?”  
  
The Dremora shrugged. “Vhatever.” He turned around nonchalantly, and began whacking the Saint with his battle-axe. She gave a metallic shriek, and defended herself, glass sword flashing and sparking as their weapons clashed.  
  
  
“Ten drakes on the Dremora,” offered Julan, when the battle had been raging for some time.  
  
Ire looked at him sidelong. “You expect me to bet against our interests?” They had let the levitation wear off, since the Saint was otherwise occupied.  
  
“Sure, why not?” said Julan, “Then even if we lose, you win something!”  
  
“Ah, yes, I understand now. When the Golden Saint steps over the fallen body of the Dremora to slash us to ribbons, I’ll die with a smile on my face, whispering beatifically with my last breath, ‘At least Julan owes me ten drakes’.”  
  
“Fine, no bets then.” Julan folded his arms and tilted his head to get a better angle. “I’ve never seen a Golden Saint up close like this before. It’s… quite something. They’re very impressive warriors.”  
  
“Impressively scantily clad, you mean. You’re hardly admiring her technique.”  
  
“There’d certainly be worse ways to go than having her be the last thing you saw.”  
  
“Next time, I won’t save you, then.”  
  
“Hah! You can’t talk. I saw the face you were making, watching that Dremora.”  
  
“What face?!”  
  
“The one where you raise your eyebrows and suck your lower lip.”  
  
“That’s my… my concentrating face!”  
  
“And your cheekbones get slightly flushed, and you–”  
  
“All right, all right, that’s enough.”

The Dremora swung his axe at the Saint’s midriff. She leaped back gracefully and pirouetted like a ballerina, whipping her leg in an athletic arc of shimmering golden destiny right into Zharkk’s face. Julan whistled softly. “That really doesn’t do anything for you?”  
  
“Aesthetically, she’s lovely.”  
  
“So… you’ve really never felt anything for women? Ever? None of them?”  
  
“Never yet.”  _Be patient with the inane question, Iriel, don’t allow your long and bitter history with it to infect your reaction, it’s not worth it._  “I have given it some consideration, you know.”  
  
“Oh, OK. I guess I always assumed that everyone, y'know… sometimes–- oh, hey, look! He’s won!”  
  
The Golden Saint’s scream was cut short, as the war-axe tore through her throat, and she fell twitching to the floor in a broken tangle of limbs. Zharkk wandered over to the wall and leaned against it, examining his nails in a disaffected fashion. Julan was already scrambling over to the body of the Golden Saint, pulling at it.

“What are you doing?” demanded Iriel. “Leave her alone, you pervert!”  
  
Julan ignored him, and dragged free the glass longsword. He hefted it in his hand and beamed. “I can keep this, right? You don’t use weapons, so it’s mine. Right?” He examined the blade in the torchlight, eyes wide. “I’ve never had anything like this. Never dreamed I’d ever have something glass, like the Armigers do. Mephala… just look at it. I can have it, can’t I? You’re not going to say we have to sell it?”

“It’s all yours. Her glass shield, too, if you like.” Iriel couldn’t help smiling at Julan’s excitement. He had already taken his own secret trophy from the fallen Saint: a heavy yellow gem in his pack, containing the results of a Soultrap spell cast at the moment of death.  _I have plans for you._  
  
“Are ve done?” said a voice like unexpected thunder behind him, as they retraced their steps to the tomb entrance. Ire convulsed with shock, and stumbled into a row of funeral urns, causing one to rock back and forth alarmingly. He grabbed and steadied it, wishing he could do the same thing for his heart.  
  
Zharkk loomed… not  _over_  him, technically, as they were roughly of a height, but with the kind of physique that resided in a state of permanent loom. He loomed at Iriel now.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” gasped Ire. “I forgot you were still with us. Thank you so much for your assistance. Should I, um… is there anything else you need?”

“Are ve done? Or more commands?”  
  
Iriel’s eyes skittered up and down the Dremora like nervous squirrels.  _Mara’s arse, he’s got pierced nipples!! Did he do that himself, do you think? Is it a ritual thing, or… something else?_  “No!” he squeaked. “Thank you, but… no, that will be all.”

“Do you  _banish_ me, then?” said the Daedra slowly, taking the time to cram each syllable full of utter contempt for Iriel’s incompetence.  
  
“Oh! Yes, yes, I banish Zharkk. I’m so sorry, I forgot the correct protocol. Please, feel free to…” He trailed off. The Dremora had already gone, and his only company now was Julan, leaning on his new sword and shaking with laughter.  
  
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” Ire muttered, but found his words contained less sarcasm than he had intended. He  _was_ glad that Julan looked cheerful, and was no longer stalking around as if there were Temple inquisitors or Imperial guards around every corner, flinching from imaginary eyes.

 _Not that I’m any better. Which is worse, being paranoid about non-existent enemies spying on you, or about merely being seen by people who may be existent, but pose no threat?_  Either way, it was a relief to be out of the cities.

 _I’d take Daedra over crowded streets and drunken Camonna Tong thugs any day. At least you’re allowed to kill Daedra, if they bother you. And there is a certain attraction to being able to summon and dismiss people at will. Even the best are only tolerable for so long. An hour or two at a time is usually sufficient. Why not formalise the arrangement?_  
  
“What’re you thinking about, with that strange expression?”  
  
“Oh… nothing.” Ire shook his head briskly, and walked on.  



	65. isolation

“I don’t get it. What are you so excited about? If the door won’t open, we may as well keep going and find somewhere to camp instead.” Iriel had been staring at the entrance to the Indoranyon stronghold for several minutes now, and Julan was bored.  
  
“It’s an enchantment.” Ire squinted at the runes knifed into the wooden door, tracing them with a long finger. “It’s based on Tessariel’s theorem, but it’s been modified. I’ve almost got it.”  
  
“So what? Why do you need to figure it out?”  
  
Iriel glared at him. “Because I can! I used to know this stuff backwards. I’m still a scholar of magic, and I’m going to prove it.”

“Who to? Your archmages or whatever aren’t here. Anyway…” Julan paused, dragging the vocabulary from his memory, and imitating Iriel’s accent for good measure: “‘Why are you still concerned with obtaining the validation of the people who cast you out?’”  
  
Ire looked as if he’d been slapped. “You can fuck right off, using my own words against me!” he choked. “I don’t need to prove anything to them. I’m proving it to myself. Now, shut up and let me concentrate. This glyph was designed to only respond to the mage who cast it, but If I can isolate the focal-point of the enchantment, I can trigger the spell it’s holding myself.”  
  
“What spell? Is that really a good idea?”  
  
“Be quiet. I know what I’m doing.”  
  
He could feel the magic pulsating beneath the surface, powerful and wild. All he had to do was release it, and that meant learning the pathways of it. Where it ran in deep, thundering courses waiting to be tapped. Where it bubbled and fizzed in tiny whirlpools of energy, too dangerous to touch directly, but which could be channelled, with care. Where the dams were, where it could be encouraged to build up pressure, until finally it would burst and flood out, whispering its secrets to him.  
  
Iriel placed his left hand against the wood, palm raised, fingertips in contact. His eyes were unfocused, as if listening intently, his whole body poised and still. Gradually, his fingers began to move - outwards, then inwards, expanding and contracting rhythmically. Then he began making slow, deliberate strokes along the grain-line, followed by a series of light, circling sweeps, spiralling inward. A rune glimmered slightly under his touch, and he drew a sharp breath, tense with anticipation.  
  
Julan shifted uneasily. “Ire, what exactly are you…?”  
  
“Shhh!”  
  
He had the pattern of it now, it was only a matter of closing the circuit, pushing it to the limit. Overloading, enchanters called it. There were ways of brute-forcing it, but there was a risk of destroying the enchantment, and besides, Iriel had his pride. He knew this dance, and he loved it. You had to sense the spell, communicate with it, through hypothesis, action, observation, and adjustment. It was an experiment and a puzzle rolled into one.  
  
The runes began to glow and throb in time to his movements. He closed his eyes, the better to feel the power mounting, carefully managing the rising pressure. Almost… he almost had it. He bit his lip. He didn’t hear Julan drop his shield with a clatter, and scramble to pick it up again.  
  
 _There!_ Magic exploded from the runes into Ire’s fingers, and as it flowed into him, the knowledge of the spell came with it, the magic filtered through the frame of the enchantment. Without even thinking, he began to cast it, raising his right hand to channel the power back into the pathways laid out for it in the wood.  
  
As Julan watched in horror, the strands of magic spilled down the door and across the ground, closing to form a ritual diagram around them both, pulsing with sigils. “Irieeeeeel, what did you do?!”  
  
Ire’s face was blissfully serene, his lips mouthing the words of the spell. The sigils began to pulse faster and faster. As Iriel completed the spell with a satisfied flourish of his right hand, beams of golden light poured upwards from the diagram. There was a sound like an angel exploding. When the light and sound faded away, so too had Julan and Iriel.  
  
  
  
Iriel  staggered, hands smoking from fireballs, bleeding from a mild dagger-wound to the thigh, along a narrow stone walkway into yet another vaulted cavern. “Julan?” he hissed into the darkness, hoping that wherever his companion was, he would hear him before any more of the Daedric cultists did.  
  
There was a churning and bubbling from the water below, then a strangled gasp as a dark head resurfaced, spluttering. After a lot of splashing, cursing and pulling, Iriel was almost as wet as Julan, but both of them were on the walkway.  
  
“Thank the Aedra you’re alive,” panted Iriel. “I was starting to think you’d been teleported into the void!”  
  
Julan coughed and spat water. “Met a… Flame Atronach. Shoved it into the water, but it… grabbed me, and I went down too. Lucky I’m in bonemould, not ebony. Not dead yet. No thanks to you!” He took off his boots and emptied out the water, glaring at Iriel all the while. “Where in Oblivion are we? And it better not actually be Oblivion. This place is nothing but Daedra and crazy Altmer!”

Iriel chose not to take the bait. Anyway, he couldn’t deny that all of the screaming cultists he’d been attacked by so far had been High Elves. “I think it’s some kind of… pocket dimension,” he said cautiously.  
  
“Then how are we going to get out?” Julan’s voice was tinged with rising panic.  
  
Eyes closed, Iriel scanned the magical frequencies of the cavern, eventually pointing to a door in the rock on the far side. “There. That’s where the magic is centred, and where the exit glyph will be. But be careful, whoever created all this is a powerful mage, so there are probably… ah yes. Traps.”

“Are you going to trigger them with Telekinesis, like you normally do? Or are you still sulking about Big Helende calling it unsophisticated?”  
  
Ire’s glance could have stripped paint. “Helende, much as I love her, thinks ceramic kagouti with painted grins are sophisticated. I will concede, however, that in situations such as this one, where there is likely to be an angry mage in the vicinity, the method can be a little explosively conspicuous. But allow me to demonstrate something Helende can’t do.”  
  
He launched a fuzzy sphere of green light into the distant door, where it soundlessly expanded to cover the entire area. He followed it up with the aforementioned Telekinesis spell, but although the floor next to the door erupted into flames, it did so completely silently.

“Huh.” Julan regarded the door. “It’s still not what I’d call  _subtle_.”  
  
Iriel’s eyelid twitched slightly. “It was completely effective, and nobody got hurt! Unlike when you try to disarm traps.”  
  
“Was that the same spell you had on when I met you in Ald'ruhn? The noise removing one?”  
  
“Correct. It has a number of applications, including preventing mages from casting anything involving the voice.” He hesitated. “I could teach it to you. If you like.”  
  
Julan’s eyes were already shining in the darkness, but now they positively glowed. “Yeah! You said you’d teach me magic, and I hardly know any spells! Mother always refused to teach me anything interesting.”  
  
Iriel smiled, mollified by this appeal to his specialities. “Very well, then. It should help us use the element of surprise against whoever is behind that door.”

  
However great and powerful a mage you are, and however fearsome an acolyte of a Daedric Prince, it’s still difficult to maintain your composure when intruders burst into the private living quarters of your warded magical sanctum while you’re taking a bath. Especially when they cast Silence, you trip on the edge of the wooden tub trying to run away, and end up floundering wetly on the floor, shrieking soundlessly.  
  
Neither Julan nor Iriel could bring themselves to attack the elderly Altmer, as he scrambled upright and hurtled, very spryly for his age, out of the door. There was a distant splash.

Julan closed the door with an embarrassed expression. “Um. Should we chase him down, or…?”  
  
“Fuck, no,” muttered Iriel. “I’m feeling guilty enough as it is. It wasn’t his fault I tricked his door into warping us here. We probably should have knocked.”  
  
“D'you ever worry that the life we lead is making us… I dunno…”  
  
“Functionally, albeit not philosophically, evil shitsacks?”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
  
  
“Take a look at some of these books!” Julan was scanning the shelves while Ire investigated the potions. “Notes on Racial… Per…”  
  
Iriel took it from him and read the title page. “Phylogeny,” he said. “Biology. Not my field, really.” He flicked through at random, wrinkling his nose. “It appears to be a group of healers trying to determine which races can interbreed with which, and being horrendously awful about it. Listen to this bit, where they’re trying to decide if Orcs are fertile with humans: 'Regrettably, our oaths as healers prevent us from forcing a coupling to satisfy our scientific knowledge’.”  
  
“Regrettably?”  
  
“Terrifying, aren’t they? That must be why we make them take oaths.” He closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. “My boyfriend at the Tower was a healer. Hiranel of Sunhold, his name was. A quiet, white-haired giant, with these big, beautiful hands that made you feel like something precious and fragile he was keeping safe. That’s what I thought, anyway. I wonder if he’s taken oaths, now. Engagement ones, probably, to that… noblewoman… in Alinor his parents had lined up for him.”  
  
He glanced sidelong at Julan. “You can ask me about him, if you like. It’s not nearly as bad as with Reu, in that nobody died, or got imprisoned. And it’s not as if I’m still  _bitter_ about it or anything.”  
  
Julan laughed softly. “Sure you’re not. And I don’t care, but you can tell me if you want.”

“Oh, well,” sniffed Ire. “I’d hate to bore you. I can see you’re very busy.” He sighed. “Honestly, there’s little to tell. I misjudged things, that’s all. I thought the Crystal Tower was going to be a haven of freedom and individuality, where nobody would care about anything except for learning, and the pursuit of scholarship. But it turns out it’s just as bad as the rest of Summerset, all internal politics, conformity and blood. Always the fucking blood.  
  
"I’d been assigned a room with this awful little shit called Orin, whose only redeeming feature was his incandescently hot elder brother, who checked up on him sometimes. Who was naturally talented at Restoration, but failing badly at everything else, because all he cared about were plants and trees and small furry animals. So I offered to tutor him privately, because of course I fucking did, I wasn’t blind. I was so much more confident then. I didn’t have all these  _issues_ … I could just… talk to people, and… not be so…” He sighed, and gestured uselessly.  
  
“That’s what brought it all crashing down, though - me talking. Hiranel said we had to keep our relationship a secret, and I didn’t want to, didn’t see why I should. I promised him, though - and then broke it, when I told Orin. He was winding me up, and I wanted to see the look on his face. It was good, too. Except then Orin wrote to his father, who teleported in, especially to meet me! A kinlord! What an  _honour_.

"He stuck me in a room and mouthed off at me for an hour about how Hiranel was his eldest, and was going do this, marry that, inherit the other. And I had to stop interfering, or else. I didn’t believe he had any leverage, and I told him so. Told him a lot of other things too, including a number of personal insults related to the size and strangely cuboid nature of his head. And that Hiranel and I were madly in love, but honestly, I think he was more angry about the head thing. He slapped me - actually fucking slapped me, the bloated tit! - and left the room. I think I yelled something after him about how my pa might only be a fisherman, but he could beat up a kinlord any day. Gods, I was such an enormous brat, back then.”  
  
“Ah, c'mon. Don’t be unfair to yourself. You’re still an enormous brat.”

“Oh, thank you. Well, after that, dear daddy went to interrogate Hiranel. Who was apparently a lot more frightened of him than I was. Or didn’t care about me as much as I thought. A little of both, probably. Especially once he realised I’d outed him to his entire family. I can’t blame him for hating me, that part was entirely my fault.  
  
“But even if I hadn’t… let’s face it, we were doomed from the start. Caste and gender boundaries both at once. I was terribly naive, and I paid for it. Even the lofty academic paradise of the Crystal Tower has mundane facets, and those require money. And funding sources, Hiranel’s pa being one. Who could threaten to cut the Sapiarchs off, if they didn’t agree to remove one small, extremely common first year, who didn’t have any high-powered family backing, and refused to stop gaying up the important people. I was lucky that the Archmagister was sympathetic to me lying on his expensive rug howling - or at any rate, wanted me to stop getting snot on the embroidery -  and arranged a transfer to the Arcane University. They could have sent me back home to my ma! Stendarr, I’d have offed myself first.”  
  
Ire prodded the spine of  _Notes on Racial Phylogeny_  with a definitely-not-bitter finger. “Fucking academics. This is the only way they understand sex - a biological curiosity centred on heterosexual reproduction, to be experienced via third-hand information. They don’t have a fucking clue.”  
  
“I did wonder why they didn’t just ask some Orcs whether they could have babies with humans. They’d probably know.”  
  
“Because then they’d have to talk to Orcs, and believe things Orcs say about themselves. Quite the controversial notion. Ugh, I’m so done with these institutions. After getting kicked out of three in a row, I’m taking the hint. Any more scholarship I do will be on my terms, not theirs.”

Julan was looking through another book. “I think all of these are scholar books. Gah… I can’t make anything out of it.” He tossed it down, frustrated.  
  
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Ire, “blame the writers. You’re not stupid, they deliberately write in academic code. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. Besides, I thought Ashlanders were usually illiterate. Oral traditions, and all that.”  
  
“Mostly. Books were my rebellion, in a way. Mother hates them, she burned them if she caught me with them. She’s convinced they’re dangerous. She can’t read at all, and refuses to try.”  
  
“How did you learn, then?”  
  
“Shani’s dad taught me. He knew all kinds of stuff, because he travelled a lot, trading in the cities. He tried to teach her as well, but she thought it was a waste of time. Me, I was hooked, started reading anything I could get hold of. I didn’t understand a lot of what I read at first, but books kept me company, when I was bored out of my mind, spending whole days on my own.” He shrugged. “Then the tribe kids made even more fun of me, because I knew funny words.”  
  
There was a faint howling from beyond the door, and Julan’s hand moved to his sword-hilt. “How are we getting out of here, again?”  
  
Iriel pointed to a chalked sigil on the wall. “There’s the exit glyph. It shouldn’t be encrypted from this direction.” He gave the enchanter’s laboratory a final, wistful look. “It really is a nice set-up he has here.”

Julan smirked at him. “Let me guess. This is going to be you in a hundred years, isn’t it? So desperate to avoid people that you actually build your own little secret world to hide in, with layers of magical locks and traps to protect you from the horror of anyone trying to talk to you.”  
  
“It is not, how dare you.” Ire tugged at his hair irritably. “I’d have a much stronger enchantment on the entrance, for a start. I wouldn’t have random strangers walking in on  _me_.”  
  
“Hah. Forget about a hundred years. Ten at most.”

Iriel exhaled, and looked suddenly very tired. “It would make a lot of things easier,” he said.  
  
Julan was watching him, head cocked slightly. “You’d really be alone all the time, if it was up to you? Wouldn’t you get bored, or lonely?”  
  
Iriel squirmed, neither wanting to offend, nor sure of the answer himself. “Not  _all_ the time, perhaps, but… it’s so exhausting, being with people.”  
  
“Because… if you ever want me to leave, you only have to–”  
  
“No! No, I really don’t, I… maybe part of me wants my own private dimension, but… I wouldn’t want to be trapped in it. A different kind of jail, except… I’d be the one trapping myself. And missing human contact for a while, until one day… I didn’t. That thought scares me."  _And attracts me, which scares me more._  
  
He gave Julan a weary smile. "Let’s get out of here before I change my mind.”  
  



	66. listen

Iriel wasn’t sure about the Grazelands at first. The general absence of anything except for grass and sky left him feeling unpleasantly exposed. After a while, though, the peace and quiet began to gently dissolve his tension, and he supposed that even if he was visible from a great distance, so too was anyone trying to approach.  
  
Julan smirked when he said that, though, and shook his head. “Anyone who’s lived here long enough knows how to move without being seen, even in grass-cover. There could be a dozen Ahemmusa all around us, and you’d never notice. There aren’t,” he added, seeing Ire’s expression, “I’d notice, even if you wouldn’t. I’m used to it, is all. Here, I’ll prove it. You sit on that rock, and then see if you can tell where I am.”

“No, thank you.”  
“Just give me a minute to–”  
“Really, no.”  
“But–”  
“Julan, you are not allowed to  _stalk_  me, do you hear?”  
“Oh, all right. I’m just trying to prove–”  
“I believe you! Now tell me where we’re headed.”  
  
Julan jumped onto the rock and pulled Ire up to join him. “OK. D'you see the twisted skyroots in the distance? That’s the top of Vos. It’s a little village with a Temple, mostly priests and fishermen living there. There’s a tavern called the Tradehouse where me and my friends… well, Shani’s friends, really… used to sneak over to, at night. The landlord didn’t kick us out, as long as we stayed out of trouble, and actually had money to pay.”

“Fine, that’s Vos. Is that where we’re going?”  
  
“Not unless you want to trade for something. I was just showing you around, kind of. Thought you might be interested. Anyway, Ahemmusa Camp should be a few miles north of Vos, this time of year, to winter the guar out of the worst of the blight-wind.”  
  
“Are we going there?”  
  
“No! They’d probably shoot me on sight, remember? We’re heading north-west, towards the coast. D'you see that weird shape on the horizon to the left of Vos?” Iriel squinted. “It looks like a stone fortress wrestling a dreugh. Is it an Imperial tower, or a Telvanni one?”  
  
“Both. You’ll see, when we get closer. That’s Master Aryon’s tower. He’s the new Telvanni magelord around here. He hasn’t done anything terrible yet, that we know of, anyway. So we’re hoping he might be one of the better ones.”

“You don’t like the Telvanni?”  
  
“It’s not that we don’t  _like_ them, exactly. Seems to me that Velothi and Telvanni ought to get along, since we both want to be left alone. Trouble is, some Telvanni think ‘ooh, Ashlanders, a handy source of people who will never be missed!’ - at least not by anyone except each other - and then people start disappearing, and their bodies turn up weeks later, covered in magical scars. And when that happens, we don’t like them much, no.”  
  
He frowned. “Someone once tried to tell me I should stop arguing slavery should be banned, because if it was, Telvanni would kidnap even more of us! As if… as if that… gah! I get that we’re trying to survive, but some of the elders can’t see past the end of their noses. Trying to preserve tradition is one thing, but slavery isn’t a Velothi tradition, and even if it was, you might as well argue that kidnapping people is a Telvanni tradition! Sheogorath… the thing that really gets me angry isAAAAAAGH!!!” An arrow whizzed past his nose, and he threw himself off the rock, dragging Iriel with him.   
  
“It’s the only way to stop him once he begins  _that_  rant,” said a voice from the surrounding grass. It was young and female, with a pronounced Velothi accent.   
  
Julan sat up immediately, and groaned. “What do you want, Shani? Come out, for Azura’s sake.” A girl of around twenty duly emerged from the grass, small-framed and slender, in chitin armour and embroidered guarhide pants. Her hair was the deep red of a fire-fern, tied high on the back of her head, from where it swung in long braids, and her face was a battleground of conflicting emotions, anger currently in the ascendant.  
  
“I thought you were dead,” she spat at Julan. “Why aren’t you dead?” Her knuckles were white as she gripped her shortbow, another arrow nocked. “You didn’t go to Red Mountain? You’ve given up that stupid plan? You’ve finally come to your senses?” She raised the bow again, aiming it at Iriel. “Who’s that?”  
  
Julan moved into her line of fire, reaching out and taking hold of the arrow, with a sigh. “Stop being a little s'wit. This is Iriel, he’s been helping me. And I haven’t given up on anything. I’m just–OW!!”

She wrenched the bow and arrow out of his hands, and took advantage of the distraction to kick him sharply in the knee, expertly locating the gap between greave and boot. “Don’t you dare call me a little s'wit! Blood and ash, Julan!” Her voice was shaking now, the arrow discarded in the grass. “Why did you come back, if you’re still a scrib-for-brains idiot? I thought I was finally rid of you!”  
  
She turned to Iriel, her eyes piercing him without need for projectiles. “Helping? Why are you helping him? Stupid n'wah! I don’t know what scuttle he’s fed you, but–”

“SHUT UP!!” Julan’s roar shook the grass. “You have NO IDEA what you’re talking about, yet you never stop saying the same old things! D'you ever put anything new in your head? You don’t listen, and you never did, so shut up and go away.”

She picked up her fallen arrow, and clutched it to her chest. “Better run home, Julan,” she hissed. “Before your  _mother_ catches you talking to me.” She wheeled sharply and marched off towards Ahemmusa camp, whipping her braids into Julan’s face so perfectly that Iriel wondered how often she’d practised it. She even succeeded in leaving a mark where the beads at the ends caught him across the cheek.  
  
“I DON’T HAVE TO STAY HERE AND LISTEN TO THIS!!” Julan yelled, pointlessly, at her retreating back. With a face like a migraine, he stomped off in the opposite direction.  
  
Iriel sat on the rock, feeling slightly shell-shocked. He didn’t have to wait long before he again heard wickwheat being ferociously crunched underfoot, and Julan returned, heading north-west, this time. “Come on,” he growled. “it’s this way.”


	67. flaming

After a day and a half of trekking through acres of wickwheat, interspersed only by spiny hackle-lo plants and the odd kagouti or alit, Iriel could finally smell the sea.  
  
“We’re almost there.” Julan paused, and turned a serious gaze on Iriel. “I need to warn you about some things. I don’t want to worry you, but it’s possible this might get nasty.”

“That Daedric ruin up ahead, you mean? We  _are_  getting rather close, true.”  
  
“What? Oh, Malacath take the Daedra, never mind them. I’m talking about my mother!” He began cracking his knuckles, and staring towards the distant coast with an anxious expression. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about her. People always misinterpret everything she does. She’s a good person. She can just get a little… over-protective.”  
  
“In what way?”  
  
“Oh… nothing serious, but… you should probably avoid doing certain things. Like entering her yurt without permission, or making loud noises or sudden movements. And it might be best not to mention certain things to her. City stuff, like books, outlanders, especially Imperials and Nords, the Temple, the Cult, the Thieves Guild… taverns…”

Comprehension dawned, and Ire almost laughed. “You’re worried you’ll get into trouble if she finds out you’ve been getting drunk and fucking Nord girls!”  
  
Julan looked panicked. “Shut up! Don’t even say that, she might be… you can never be sure when she’s…” He glanced around, apprehensively. “And it’s not just that. Anything that might make her think I’ve been picking up… foreign influences. It’s why she burned my books. I’m more worried about what she’ll make of you, for example.”  
  
“Me? Am I very dangerous and subversive?”  
  
“Well… she might think so. She’s very… traditional. If you could try not to, um…”  
  
“Be horrendously gay at her?”  
  
Julan looked at him, desperately. “I’m sorry. But it would be best if you didn’t talk about your… history.”  
  
“And there was me, all ready to regale her with sordid tales of scandalous liaisons and deviant sex.”  
  
“Don’t even joke about it, OK?”  
  
“I admit, I’d need to invent some good ones, first. I don’t know what you imagine my life’s been like, but the vast majority of it involved books, not cocks. Oh, relax. I’ll be good. I’ll stick to telling stories about you, shall I? Like that time you drank eight maztes and told me I had pretty eyes when Tilde and me carried you upstairs.”  
  
“I… did?”  
  
“Or that time you let me put my head in your lap. Or when we shared a drunken night swapping clothes in a Hlaalu nobleman’s bed.”  
  
“Uhh… Maybe you should let me do all the talking.”  
  
  
  
As the Grazelands finally become the Sheogorad coast, the wickwheat petered out and turned to sand underfoot. It was mid afternoon when they ran out of land on a bleak stretch of beach at the rocky foothills of the mountains. Although, Iriel reminded himself, squinting up at the blight-clouds on the distant peaks, there was only one real mountain on Vvardenfell. All the rest were mere fluctuations in the slopes of the great volcano.  
  
 _And I’ve already been as close to that as I ever want to get. I do hope this visit doesn’t make this ridiculous Nerevarine business any worse. He still looks so worried. Surely his mother can’t be worse than mine, considering how fondly he speaks of her. So why did challenging the devil seem a better option than staying at home?_  
  
Julan was leading him down towards two small, dome-shaped structures made of canvas and skins, nestled just above the tide-line. Ire couldn’t see anyone outside, although a driftwood fire was burning on the sand, and various piles of refuse and assorted detritus lay scattered about. And… there were sticks, planted into the ground along the approach, hung with pale, round objects swinging in the breeze like unnatural fruit. He shuffled to a halt, his stomach turning over. “Julaaaaan!”

“What?” He followed Iriel’s trembling finger. “Oh. OK, now those are… those are a  _joke_. I’m almost positive she found those somewhere, she didn’t kill anyone for them. Probably.”  
  
Ire was staring from one skull to another, noticing more and more around the campsite. “They’re  _everywhere!_  What the fuck!?”  
  
“They’re just for show, to keep people away. Look, most of them aren’t even elven–”  
  
“So what?!”  
  
“I mean they’re not from locals, she might have got them from a… a shipwreck or something.”  
  
“You don’t even know? You never asked?! It never occurred to you to wonder?! Auri-El…”  
  
“It’s not that I didn’t, I… she’s secretive, that’s all. She won’t talk about anything she doesn’t think I need to know. After a while, I stopped bothering.” He shrugged, pulling his mouth tight. “Come on. She must be inside her yurt. You wait here, while I talk to her.”  
  
As Julan headed for the larger of the two domes, Iriel edged his way past the skeletal guards, and picked his way through the piles of old sacks, bones, bugshells, seashells and other flotsam and jetsam until he reached the fire. No cauldron, he noted, with relief, or even a kettle of tea. Still, there was a strong odour of decaying mudcrab, with an undercurrent of something alchemical, possibly void salts, from the faint whiff of ozone he was getting. Whatever it was, the combination was indescribably nausea-inducing.  
  
“I have had it with these fucking mabrigashes” he muttered, dropping his bag and massaging his eye sockets.

Julan had pushed through the hide flap that served as a door, and vanished into the darkness. Iriel, trying not to breathe too deeply, was casting about for something to sit on, when the pile of old sacks next to him lunged upwards with an ear-splitting hiss. A contorted, crimson-eyed face emerged from a fold of hessian, no longer a sack, but a hooded robe. “What are you doing with my son, outlander!?” it rasped.  
  
Iriel was not in any condition to handle this well. Arguably, there existed no possible condition in which he would have done, short of being unconscious or dead.  
  
Julan had only been gone for the few seconds it took to determine that nobody was in the yurt, but he was still barely in time to hurl himself at the shrieking Altmer, knocking him to the ground. The fireball flew wide, detonating against a muckspunge further up the beach, which burst in an explosion of brackish slime.   
  
The mabrigash, teeth bared, began chanting a summoning spell, her hands weaving a portal to some Daedric realm out of light and fury. Her hood had fallen back, and black hair hung down her face in stringy tendrils.

“No!” Julan, pinning Iriel face-down, twisted to face her. “Mother,  _don’t_. It’s me, I’m here, it’s OK. I’m not going to let him hurt you!”  
  
Ire was making outraged noises into the sand. “Don’t! Move!” Julan roared into his ear, and leaped up to interrupt his mother’s spellcasting, grasping her wrists as she howled in protest, the portal dissolving into broken, fading strands. “STOP IT!!” Julan’s voice was hoarse, but succeeded in halting matters long enough for him to steer his mother towards her yurt without either she or Iriel casting any more spells.  
  
Half restraining, half supporting, he guided her small frame inside the doorway. There she stayed, breathing hard and eyes swivelling wildly, as he addressed her. “Mother, please. Look at me. Let me explain. Please just wait inside for a moment, and I’ll tell you everything, please… it’s OK. It’s OK.”  
  
She barely came up to his shoulder, but her eyes became unflinching as they scanned his face. Then she turned her gaze on Iriel, radiating deep suspicion.   
  
“It’s OK,” Julan repeated. “Give me a minute. I’ll come right back. Please.” She finally nodded, and pulled the door closed.  
  
“Ire? You… you can get up now. She’s gone.” Julan crouched next to Iriel, who hadn’t moved from his prone position. “Iriel? Are you…?”  
  
Ire pushed himself up onto his elbows, his face a mask of sand and mortification. “Am… I…  _what?_ ” he croaked thickly, then started spitting out bits of shoreline.

“Ire… when I warned you about things you shouldn’t do to my mother, I hoped ‘don’t throw fireballs at her’ went without saying.” Julan sighed, and rubbed his neck. “It’s OK, I’m not… I know she can be… uh… She really needs to stop doing that thing where she jumps out at people, it never helps.”

Rising, he tried to assist Iriel in his attempts to recalibrate himself and brush the sand off, but Ire swatted him away. Julan turned and began pacing around the fire, instead. “Look, I think I can fix this, but you need to go away for a while, and let me talk to her alone. It’s still hours till dark, why don’t you, uh… go for a walk, or something.”

“…Fine.” Unable to deal with further conversation, Iriel stalked off up the beach.


	68. browsing

Iriel peered up at Tel Vos, trying to make sense of it, and failing. Had the fort been there first, or the mushroom growths? Whichever it was, they were locked together now, in an intimately penetrative architectural embrace. He found himself wondering what Akish would make of it, and what sort of architecture they had in Black Marsh.  
  
 _I hope she and the others made it. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know._

“Outlander!” He recoiled at the male Dunmer voice from above, but it didn’t carry the hostility that usually accompanied that word. Looking up, he found a Telvanni guard looking over one of the battlements. He thought there were two of them, until he realised the head on the left was the displaced cephalopod helm of the one on the right, with the scrappy goatee that made him look like he’d been eating charcoal in the dark.

“Yes?” Ire said, trying to sound confident, and definitely nothing like someone caught trespassing on a Telvanni mage-lord’s property.  
  
“You ‘ere to see someone? Or are you after the Dwemer Museum?”  
  
“I… I’m fine, I… I’m just browsing.”  
  
“Browsing what?”  
  
“Oh. Ah… Nothing. What was that about a Dwemer Museum?”  
  
The guard reeled off a long series of directions, involving multiple towers, floors, staircases, doors, and dire warnings not to mix them up, on pain of unspecified unpleasantries. “It’s the sodding roots,” he said. “They’re forever blockin’ the doors, gettin’ into the foundations, mekkin’ 'oles in what oughtn’t to 'ave 'oles, lettin’ the vermin in. And I don’t mean rats,” he added, darkly. Then accuracy overrode melodrama. “Well, fair do’s. There’s rats down there, too.”

Iriel, tangling his fingers into nervous knots, gave him a beseeching look. “Is that really the only way there? I  _am_ interested in the Dwemer, but…”  
  
“Well. If you’ve the means to get up on t'bridge, mebbe I could let you in the side entrance. Don’t go shoutin’ about it, though, or they’ll all want in.”  
  
As Ire levitated gratefully towards him, he searched through his keys. “Shouldn’t really, but it’s not your fault the main door’s all rooted up again. And Master Aryon’d hate to miss a chance to show off 'is collection. You part of the 'Ouse?”  
  
“The… Ouse?”  
  
“The 'Ouse! 'Ouse Telvanni! You don’t look like a local, if you tek my meaning.”  
  
“Um… just a scholar, passing through. What’s Master Aryon like? I’m told he hasn’t been here long.”

“Oh, 'e’s no worse then 'e should be. I’ve been in 'is service for a few years now, came here along of 'im. You’ll not hear many bad words from those as know 'im. Full o’ new ideas, 'e is. Some of 'em,” he jerked his head towards the largest roots, “better'n others. Still, mustn’t grumble. Say what you like about Tel Vos, at least it 'as stairs. Some of it. Most of 'em don’t bother, think it 'elps keep the undesirables out. Or mebbe it never occurs to 'em. I worked for Mistress Therana once. Lasted two weeks, I did. Blighted ancestors, don’t get me started.”  
  
He ushered Iriel through a door into the central tower. “Right this way, sera, jus’ down those stairs. You tek care, now.”  
  
  
  
Initially, Iriel felt rather jaded. He was unable to summon much enthusiasm for a museum consisting of a few tables of rusty cogs and cups he’d seen a thousand times before. In fact, he was mentally composing his snark-laden takedown of Aryon’s pretensions to Dwemer scholarship, to be delivered the next time he visited Baladas Demnevanni. He stopped, though, when he came to the final room.

The first reason was the wall-mounted blueprint of something that looked remarkably like one of the illustrations in the ancient Dwemer text he’d found in Gnisis. He didn’t have time to examine it, though, before a hissing noise from the second reason caused him to turn around.  
  
“AURI-SHITTING-EL!!!”  
  
Once he realised the Steam Centurion was part of the exhibit, he was only marginally less shocked. He stood in front of it, gaping. The thing was over six feet tall, and almost as wide. He moved closer, curious as to what continued to power it. The machinery inside the torso was clearly still active in some capacity, even if it was largely immobilised. The way the bronze chest-plates were moving, coupled with the regular hiss of venting steam created the remarkable impression that it was breathing heavily.  
  
 _Why does that remind me of something? In a… dream? …Oh._  
  
He coloured slightly, and, turning away in a hurry, walked straight into another Dwemer automaton that hadn’t been there the moment before. This one was less bulky than the Centurion, but taller even than Iriel. And not only active, but moving around. As Ire stumbled backwards in panic, it raised its arms and removed its head, revealing a strong-boned Altmer face. A few blonde locks caught as he did so, and tumbled free from the tie at the nape of his neck.   
  
“Please, calm yourself,” he said, in the huskily refined accent of south-eastern Summerset. “It’s only armour!”

Iriel glared outrage at him. “Why is everything in this bloody place trying to convince me there’s something sexually attractive about Dwemer automata?!”  
  
“…Excuse me?”  
  
“OH GODS, why did I say that out loud? Ugh, just fuck me sideways with a huge spiked… aaaagh, Iriel stop talking.”

The armoured man looked faintly perturbed, but determined to be polite about it. “I don’t quite understand, but I assure you, I’m here in a professional capacity. My name is Rimintil, and I serve as retainer to Master Aryon. I’ve been involved in the retrieval of many of the artifacts you see in this museum. Is there anything I can help you with?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“About the exhibits, I mean. Because not to cause offence, but I have a lovely fiancée back in–”

“I MEANT ABOUT THE EXHIBITS!” Iriel cast about desperately for a non-misinterpretable question. “This Steam Centurion. Did you personally… um… Were you involved in its… retrieval?”  
  
“Oh, yes!” Rimintil smiled proudly. “Getting him back in one piece was quite the challenge! Found him in Nchuleft. Quite the nice little haul we pulled out of there.”  
  
“Really?” said Iriel as neutrally as possible, mentally crossing Nchuleft off his list. “I’m amazed there’s anything left to salvage, at this point.”

“Ah.” Rimintil tapped his nose with a brass-covered finger. “You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of native superstition, and some of the ruins are still being excavated, even now. The deeper levels have been completely buried for centuries. The next big thing is Mzuleft, of course, up near Dagon Fel. They’re still clearing the entrance, and no one has any idea what we’ll find down there. It’s very exciting.”

Iriel nodded, trying to look bored, although he was anything but. To allay suspicion, he changed the subject back to the Steam Centurion. “So… is it fully functional?”  
  
Rimintil’s eyebrow quirked.  
  
“WAIT NO… I mean, um… it’s still operational? It has power? Where from?”

“Ah yes! Master Aryon was very happy we kept his workings intact. They’re all powered largely by soul gems, you know,”  
  
Iriel nodded furiously. “I knew soul gems were involved! I’ve found them inside broken ones, but there’s more to it, isn’t there? Largely, you said. What else is happening? Do you know?”  
  
“Unfortunately not. Master Aryon was working on it, but he’s something of a… he has many projects, not all of them.. as high priority as others.”  
  
Iriel sensed deflective diplomacy. “He’s given up?”  
  
“Oh, no, I’m sure he’s just very busy. His primary field of research is currently the Sload, I believe.”  
  
Iriel’s brow furrowed as his mind turned inwards, sifting through information. “I read about a working Dwemer spider automaton that was carried away on a boat across the Sea of Ghosts,” he mused. “But when it reached a certain point, it stopped moving. The captain turned the ship around, and it reanimated. As if there were something linking its vitality to Vvardenfell itself." 

Rimintil gave him a sharp look. "I’ve never heard of that. Where did you get this information?”  
  
 _From a private Mages Guild report that I obtained under false pretences, and really shouldn’t share with unknown Telvanni. Mara’s arse, Iriel can’t you keep your mouth shut about anything?_

As he hesitated, Rimintil said seriously, “You should speak with Master Aryon. I’m sure he’d be extremely interested. What did you say your name was?”  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Iriel blustered frantically, “it’s getting late, and I really must be going. Thank you so much for your assistance.”  
  
Leaving the other Altmer scratching his head in bemusement, he scurried out of the door.


	69. deciding

_Dear Iriel. Please stop embarrassing me. Yours ever,_ _unfortunately, Iriel._  
  
He skidded down the hill from Tel Vos in the gathering dusk, losing his feet from under him part-way and travelling the last few yards on the seat of his pants. He sat in the grass, bruised on multiple levels, scraping together shreds of his tattered self-esteem. That was when the alit found him.

With a strangled moan, it lurched out of the wickwheat like an angry drunk. No time to cast, but reflex threw up a hand to deflect the barely-Euclidean, hyper-extended jaws that comprise an unreasonable percentage of an alit.  
  
His face escaped its destined mauling, but jagged teeth plunged into his arm instead, the beast grunting, wheezing, and spraying poisonous saliva. He screamed, kicked at it, but it was like trying to wrestle a rabid, steroid-infused beartrap.  
  
“Using emotion to fuel your spells is a highly detrimental practice,” they had lectured him, in Destruction class. “A true mage relies only on the strength of his will. Else, how will you ever cast with a clear mind?”  
  
Iriel, whatever his feelings about ‘true magery’, didn’t disagree, in principle. In practice, he found that the times he had a clear mind and the times he wanted to make things burst into flames rarely coincided.  
  
Now, for instance, he forced his agonised shock out through his fingers and down the alit’s gaping throat, until it fell into a shuddering mess of burnt scales and blackening teeth.  
  
Praying he wouldn’t throw up or pass out, Ire pulled away the remains of his shirt sleeve and forced himself to examine his forearm.  _pleasenovisiblebone please_ _novisiblebone_  
  
The good news was that viewing the full extent of the damage didn’t affect him as badly as he feared. Shock and adrenaline had buffered him into protective numbness, holding him distant from his body, as if it were someone he barely knew. It minimised the pain and visceral horror of ruptured flesh, the terror of his compromised physical integrity.  
  
Which was fortunate, because (cue the bad news) the injury was severe. He saw multiple deep, ragged tears, and black poison leaching into his veins, spreading under his skin like dark roots, while his untainted blood gushed from the wound, dripping from his elbow into the ungrateful earth.  
  
Sadly, Restoration spells did benefit from an untroubled mind, thus why he was so endlessly incompetent at them. Post-rehab, at least, he could virtually cast Cure Poison in his sleep. Healing the wound would be more difficult, principally because that would require him to be fully present in his body, aware of the processes he was attempting to control. That wasn’t something Ire could achieve on demand, even at the best of times. If his consciousness decided to flounce away from his physicality in a huff, there wasn’t much he could do except ride it out. In this case, however, his body made the unilateral decision to take him back. Piercing agony shrieked into him, discordant panic rising to join it in a cacophony of raw sensory overload.  
  
_Do something, idiot, or bleed to death! Those are the options. Do you want to live, or not?_ He was often surprised, when the answer remained affirmative.  
  
A period of desperate frustration followed, as Iriel tried to focus past the trauma long enough to mend it. The key was to trick his body into believing it was worthy of wholeness, convince his flesh that flawless inviolability was its deserved and rightful state. He couldn’t. That level of self-delusion was beyond him. In time, though, he succeeded in stemming the blood flow, albeit not closing the wound. It would be enough to allow him to move.  
  
Wrapping his shirt-sleeve remnants over the worst of it, he tried to stand. Nothing happened. His legs were lead, and the effort alone blurred his vision and buzzed his ears.  _Surely I didn’t lose that much blood. What’s… wrong?_

Now that the tide of adrenaline was ebbing, he began to notice other things about his woefully fallible body. The prickling heat under his skin, slicking him with sweat. The weary throbbing in his head, clouding his thoughts. And the weakness, making even sitting up an arduous feat and tipping him slowly but inexorably towards sleep.  
  
“You’re blighted,” came Shani’s matter-of-fact voice. Startled, he turned, and there she was, cross-legged on the hill behind him, chewing a wickwheat straw. “All the alits here carry it. You’ll fall asleep soon, then the fever will take you. Without a cure, you’ll be dead in days. I’ve seen it.”  
  
“How long have you been there?” he spluttered.  
  
“A while. I saw you come out of Tel Vos.”  
  
“But you didn’t do anything until now?”  
  
“I was watching. I hadn’t decided. I’m still deciding.” She pursed her lips. “I’ll see if I think of a reason to help you.”  
  
“Out of the goodness of your heart?”  
  
She gave a snorting laugh. “No.”  
  
“Because I can tell you what Julan’s been doing?”

She spat out the wickwheat. “You think I care about that s'wit? I know what he’s been doing. Slamming his head into a rock and calling it heroism, that’s what.”   
  
Ire closed his eyes and nodded, consciousness struggling for grip as the slope steepened towards oblivion. “That… sounds about right.”  
  
She looked at him sidelong. “You think? Then why are you helping him do it? Hey! Don’t close your eyes on me! Ugh…” She sprang up. “I’ll get someone to carry you to our healer. Hold on.”  
  
  
He didn’t remember much of what followed, past scraps and fragments. Shani, yelling instructions to a couple of young Velothi men, as they rolled him onto a blanket. Making barely coherent protests that they return him to the Kaushibael camp, instead of wherever they were taking him, and Shani laughing.  
  
“Don’t you want to live? Julan can’t cure blight. You want to trust yourself to the mercy of that witch Mashti?”  
  
After that, watching the swaying sky deepen as they carried him, stars fading in one by one. Drifting in and out of awareness to snatches of incomprehensible but soothingly sibilant Velothi dialect, punctuated by the rhythmic crunch of feet on the dry grass.  
  
The last thing he recalled, before the fever took him under, was a far-off cry of greeting, Shani’s answering two-tone whistle, and the distant, dream-like sound of chimes.


	70. ghosts

Iriel could have slept forever, sunken as a shipwreck, but a sharp, stabbing pain in his head was hoisting him surfaceward on a fisherman’s hook. He opened his eyes. The small girl squeaked, dropped the stick and hid behind her… brother, judging by their identical dark brown hair, his cropped at the collar, hers in long braids. Four blood-red eyes stared at him.

“Nrhinna! Vuh! Na'ullan, Ishanni. Tch!” A stern-faced woman with tightly coiled white hair appeared behind them, arms folded. The children flowed past her solid legs and wide hips like ripples round a rock. She was swathed in a greenish woven skirt, topped with an apron stained with a dozen unknown substances.  
  
“Don’t mind them,” she said to Iriel, as they vanished through the doorway. “They don’t see many outlanders.”  
  
Sitting up, he found himself in a large yurt, the ceiling hung with drying plants and herbs. Marshmerrow, he recognised, and hackle-lo. Chokeweed, roobrush. Bundles of corkbulb root on the wooden table. The hide walls were hung with heavy rugs in bright stripes of burnt orange and warm brown, and there were several other bedrolls besides the one he was lying on, all currently empty.  
  
Ire gripped the edge of the smoke-coloured blanket covering him, pulling it around his knees, which he raised like a shield. He wasn’t exactly  _afraid_  of the Ahemmusa, but he was consumed with a dreadful feeling of imposition, of having trespassed into a private world. The sounds of the camp filtered through the walls: an old woman’s cracked, knowing laughter, a low vibrating whicker he thought might be a guar. A man singing a haunting ballad in a mournful tenor, until a woman reprimanded him sharply, and he stopped. And chimes, always the wind-chimes in the background.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he husked, throat dry as ash. “I didn’t mean to… to… force you to help me, I… um… thank you?”  
  
She looked up from the clothes she was folding. “Are you full awake, then? Last time you spoke to me, you were delirious. Talking all manner of nonsense. How d'you feel now?”  
  
“Ungh… Embarrassed, but that’s normal. What did I say?”  
  
Never you mind about that. How d'you feel in yourself?“ She felt his forehead. "Fever’s down, so you’re mending. Lucky we caught it early, and that I keep the cure ready to hand, times being what they are. Not so long ago, we didn’t know what it was, had no means to cure it.” She grimaced. “Shani lost her mother that way. You should thank her. We don’t usually take in blighted strangers.” She dipped a wooden cup into a barrel of water, and he took it, gratefully.  
  
“Mamaea!” Another woman burst into the yurt, obviously distressed, and, Iriel noted with horror, heavily pregnant.  _Please don’t let her give birth in here, please_.  
  
The healer sprang up and took the hand of the newcomer, who was speaking quickly and tearfully in Velothi, gesturing fretfully at her belly with her free hand. “Peace, Nummu,” she replied gently in pointed Tamrielic, “look, the outlander’s here. Wait ‘til I come to you in your yurt. Besides, I checked you last night, and all was well. You worry too much.”  
  
“I do not care if outlander!” Nummu exclaimed. “Is his fault, to bring more blight! Let him hear, let him see what he cause! I know a dead baby in my womb, Mamaea, know it too much.”  
  
“Hush, you’re scaring the boy!” Mamaea looked disapproving, but placed a hand on Nummu’s belly. “If it’ll quiet you, I’ll check again.”  
  
Iriel knew he should look away, but couldn’t resist observing Mamaea’s process. She was casting a very localised form of detection spell, extending it mere inches from her fingers. Iriel wondered how she could separate the life force of the mother from that of the baby.  
  
Her face betrayed nothing as she worked, but eventually, she turned back to Nummu, and said softly, “You were right. Davemar shulli ahurshi, lerim. Do you want me to quicken the end?”

“No. I carry my child while she remains to me. I carry her bones and I carry her ghost. When the time comes, Mausur and I do as always. Then we take where her brother and sisters wait for her. You and Mab raise children, Mamaea, and Sen and Kausi raise guar. But Mausur and I raise only ghosts and corpses, and we know how it is done.”  
  
“I’ll get Sinnammu to have everything ready for when you return. Have Mausur fetch me, if you want me, lerim.”  
  
Nummu nodded bleakly, and left the yurt. She didn’t acknowledge Iriel again, to his great relief.  
  
Mamaea sat on a stool and closed her eyes for a few moments, composing herself. Then she said, “Not your fault. She knows it too, but she’s grieving. I’d felt the life in her weakening for days, but I didn’t want her to lose hope. We have few live births, now, and most that breathe don’t survive 'til they’re named. My Nrhinna was the last to make it, and it ran close with her, for a time. The Blight takes them so easily, when they’re tiny. So quickly. Some past healing before I even got to them. All with the ancestors, now.”  
  
She snapped her chin up, and returned to her businesslike manner. “Enough of that. Only the ash drinks our tears. I am a healer, and Malacath decrees we must be tested.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Iriel said, knowing it meant nothing, knowing nothing else. “If it’s not inappropriate to ask… do all your people join the ancestors after death? Even babies?”  
  
“If the bone rites are done.”  
  
“And then their ghost joins the ancestors? Meaning… the soul is harnessed to something? Together with all the other souls that died before?”  
  
“Don’t say 'harnessed’. They’re family, not pack-guar. All the ancestors of the Ahemmusa dwell within the  _kausagursha_ , the ghost relics that protect us.”  
  
“Protect you, how?”

Mamaea had moved over to her table, and was chopping marshmerrow. “You ask a lot of questions, all of a sudden. The relics are the business of the wise women. Talk to them, not me. I take care of the living, not the dead.”  
  
“It’s just… if every Ahemmusa soul is placed within this relic, as you say, then their number would increase over time. Surely this relic must be incredibly powerful by now, and become more so every time another person dies.”

Mamaea’s knife paused, briefly. “It should be powerful indeed, then,” she said. “We’ve had nothing but bone rites here these past years. Ever since the ashkhan died, and all his warriors with him, it’s as if we’ve been cursed. So many I couldn’t save.” She began chopping again, rhythmic, automatic. “The relics didn’t save them, either. What good are they, all our dead, if they can’t help us?”

Iriel rubbed his thumbnail along his lower lip, pensively. “I’ve never heard that souls lose power, over time. Most enchanters testify to the reverse, that older souls are more powerful. But if they’re not in soul gems, there might be some loss occurring, depending on the target of the enchantme–”  
  
“It’s not enchantment! It’s holy ritual, ancestor worship!” She rounded on him, angrily. “I told you. I’m no wise woman, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But you’ll show respect while you’re in my yurt.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Right. Don’t say that sort of thing around here. There’s others who won’t be so understanding. Especially if they know you were seen with Julan Kaushibael.” She put her hands on her hips and levelled her sternest gaze at him. “I healed you because Shani begged me, and we’re a peaceful tribe. We don’t want trouble. And the Kaushibaels are trouble. Both of them.”

“I thought Julan was only outcast due to conflicts his mother was involved in before he was born.”  
  
“Hah. Is that what he told you? He used to be welcome here, you know, up to a point. We don’t hold with blaming children for their parents’ sins. But that was before they took their revenge.”  
  
“Revenge?”

Mamaea glanced towards the doorway of the yurt. “I’ll not speak of it,” she muttered. “I’ve said too much to an outlander, already. Just know that the pair of them are a bad lot. Mashti Kaushibael is a murderous witch, and as for Julan… well. I’ve no proof he was involved, but he’s always been his mother’s creature in every other way. Andwe all know how he treated Shani. I hoped he was gone for good, so she might finally stop wringing her heart out over him, but nooo. Here he comes, sauntering back again, and who’ll have to pick up the pieces? Me.” She huffed out her breath, and scowled. “I must talk to Sinnammu. Behave yourself, you hear?”  
  
Iriel nodded as innocently as he could.


	71. honest

The hide flap covering the door-frame twitched, and Shani slipped through it with a furtive glance behind her. There was a sharpness and deliberation in the way she moved that was neither grace nor awkwardness, but a kind of brittle self-consciousness, caught between the two.  
  
The upper section of her lank red hair was twisted into a loose knot, the rest fell onto her freckled grey shoulders and hung about her face. She was wearing a sleeveless yellow tunic, red-belted over tan pants that ended mid-calf. Her feet were bare, but a woven band of gold-green threads and small glinting beads looped twice around one bony ankle.

She crouched next to Iriel with an enigmatic smile. “You’re awake!” There was a hint of glee in her eyes that he found unsettling. “Mamaea sent me. She said to give you this.” Her hand emerged from behind her back, presenting him with a small earthenware flask. “A healing potion. She forgot to give it to you before.”  
  
“I see. Thank you.”  
  
Shani stood up, and began idly poking through the contents of a basket. “Tell me when you’re done. She needs the flask back, she says.”

Ire uncorked the bottle and sniffed at it. Sure enough, it was a healing potion, wickwheat and marshmerrow being the dominant notes. “I’m feeling much better,” he said. “Mamaea can keep it for someone else, if that would help.”   
  
Shani shrugged. “Mam just said you should drink it. She’s like that, always thinks she knows what’s best for you. It’s easiest not to argue, but I can go ask her, if you like.”  
  
“No, no. It’s fine.” Iriel took a small sip, sifting the taste across his tongue speculatively, before swallowing. “Is this  _only_  a healing potion?”  
  
“Ask Mam, not me.”  
  
“It’s just… a lot of people have tried to drug me lately, and I must be getting paranoid, because…”  
  
“Shanishilabi Zainsubani, what in Oblivion do you think you’re doing?” Mamaea’s head appeared in the doorway, and Shani froze. The healer’s eyes narrowed. “What did I tell you about interfering with my patient? Just because you brought him doesn’t mean you get to keep sneaking in here, messing around! What are you up to now?”  
  
Shani quickly reshaped her guilty expression into innocent confusion. “Nothing! Minabibi had some extra healing potions, and I was trying to help!”  
  
“You?” scoffed Mamaea. She shifted her predatory focus from Shani to Iriel. Shani used the opportunity to edge closer to the door, casting nervous-rabbit glances at Ire. He considered his options.

“It’s true,” he said. “I had a headache, and she was kind enough to go and fetch me something.” He raised the flask, in demonstration. “She’s been keeping me company.” He met Shani’s eye. “Out of the goodness of her heart.”  
  
Mamaea pursed her lips, unconvinced. “Fine. But if she’s bothering you, holler, and I’ll kick her out. She’s not supposed to be in here.” Shaking in disapproval, Mamaea’s head disappeared again.  
  
“OK.” Shani sat cross-legged next to Iriel, her small pointed nose inches from his. Her voice was harder now: no niceties, all business. “Why did you do that?”  
  
“Why did I refrain from telling Mamaea that you put chokeweed into my healing potion, knowing full well it would combine with the marshmerrow to incorporate a willpower draining effect?”  
  
“I didn’t!” Ire glared at her, and she grinned, shameless. “Know full well, I mean. I don’t know potions. I just got Min to give me something to make you talk to me. But if you knew, why didn’t you tell Mamaea? Why’d you cover for me?”  
  
“Because,” said Ire, suppressing his exasperation, “you don’t  _need_  to drug me to get me to talk to you. I think we’re on the same side. We both want Julan to stop this ridiculous Nerevarine business. Right?”  
  
Her face stiffened, eyes filled with agonised understanding. She nodded, wordless, then looked down at the blanket in front of her, worrying it with her fingers. She began pulling off tiny pills of fibre as she spoke, her voice barely audible. “He won’t talk to me any more. He never listened, but now he won’t even look at me. You’d never think we used to be best friends. But we messed it all up with love, and now everything’s broken. I guess he already told you about me, huh? I bet he said I was rude and demanding, and argued with him all the time. That I was a liar, a thief and a troublemaker. And that I compared his mother to a Hunger, but without the charm and good looks.”

Iriel shifted uncomfortably. “Not really. He doesn’t like to talk about it.” He failed to hide a small smirk. “For the record, I did worse than insult his mother. I threw a fireball at her.”  
  
Shani clapped her hands over her mouth, as a high-pitched squeak escaped through her fingers. “Mephala! I wish I’d seen that! Did you get her?”  
  
“Unfortunately not. And Julan sat on my head before I could get in a second shot.”  
  
“Ugh! That scuttlehead! He always sides with her, doesn’t he? Better luck next time!”  
  
Thoughts of violence evidently improved her mood, as she was all cheerful insouciance again. She regarded him critically, frowning slightly. “Is that how your hair got all burned?”  
  
Ire leaned forwards, suddenly animated. “No! That happened over a week ago, and I’ve tried to make it better, but I can’t! And all my friends are being so fucking polite, telling me it looks fine, but I know it doesn’t!”  
  
“No, it looks really bad. Like an abandoned cliff racer nest.”  
  
“THANK YOU!! At last, someone willing to be honest with me!”

She raised her eyebrows. “Do you want me to fix it? I’m good! I cut everyone’s hair. I used to do Julan’s, so it serves him right it looks so bad now.” She grinned, unrepentantly smug over her small victory.  
  
“You? Cut it? Well… if you think you can do something. I mean, it can’t get much worse. Just promise you won’t make it any shorter than you have to.”  
  
Shani was already searching Mamaea’s table for scissors. “It’s OK, I understand. I love my hair. Someone cut off my braid as a dare when I was little, and–”  
  
“Auri-El, I would have killed them. I’m a peaceful person, but they’d never have found the body. You should have seen me whenever they shaved my head in the prison. I think I  _bit_ someone once.”  
  
“I would have done too, if they hadn’t stopped me! My Ammu used to look after my hair. Now nobody touches it but me.”

She found the scissors, and scooted behind Iriel, examining him. He winced and flinched away when she came to the right-hand side. “Oh gods, please don’t touch it. It’s burned all the way to the skin. It makes me ill just thinking about it, never mind looking at it.”  
  
Shani manipulated his locks, thoughtfully. “It’s much longer on the other side. If I part it there, I might be able to hide it. Trust me, OK?”  
  
“Do you really think you’ve given me reason to trust you?”  
  
“That was before. I’ve decided, now. We’re going to be friends.”  
  
“Why do my alleged friends keep trying to  _drug_  me?” He sighed. “Fine. Do whatever you like.”


	72. panic

“It’ll be fine!” Shani had him by the hand, and was dragging him, inexorably, towards the door of the yurt. “I’ll tell you what to do. You won’t offend anyone, I promise! We gave you guest-rites, so no one can hurt you.”  
  
Iriel dug his feet into the earthen floor, and tried to grab the door-frame. “It’s not that! I’m not good with  _any_  people!”

“Don’t be a s'wit! You’re all better, your hair looks great, and you can’t stay in our healer’s yurt forever! Come  _on!_ ”  
  
Shani’s small size belied the amount of determined strength she was able to bring to bear, when she chose to. With the final yank of an impatient midwife, she birthed him, blinking into the light of the camp. He managed not to cry like a baby, and fortunately she didn’t slap his rear to provoke him, as it probably would have worked.  
  
A dozen Ahemmusa turned to stare at him. Shani was gripping his dominant casting hand, and he knew spells would only make things worse. He closed his eyes and tried his best not to have a repeat of the Imperial Chapels Incident, but he couldn’t help the panic rising in his throat. Normally, he could tell himself he was being paranoid, thinking that everyone was scrutinising him. Here, he was a genuine object of curiosity.  
  
He hoped Shani was right about his hair. It certainly felt different, but she hadn’t offered him a mirror, and he was afraid to ask. She had also found a tunic from somewhere to replace his ripped shirt. It fell higher on his hips than a tunic should, but considered as a shirt, he’d had worse fits. It was brown and cream, with a small zig-zagging pattern, and a wide band of embroidery along the square neckline.  
  
Shani smiled and stood on her toes, apparently planning some form of introduction. He braced himself. Then, her brow creased, and she began staring in another direction. Several other Ahemmusa seemed similarly distracted.   
  
Soon, Ire knew why. Someone was screaming, and something else… several somethings, in fact, were making a deep, echoing, bubbling sound, like an underwater foghorn. Getting louder. And louder. People began to run, either towards the sound or away.

Shani groaned. “Oh nooo, not another one! SEN!!”  
  
“Arem!” A middle-aged woman with ebony braids and menacing eyebrows sprinted from the back of the camp, carrying a long staff with a hook on the end. “Zudasha'eth? …oh.”  
  
A yurt was collapsing into a mess of hide and poles at the far end of the camp, under the trampling feet of two enraged guar. As he drew closer, Iriel could see the animals were ill, shaking their huge heads back and forth, slime and froth pouring from their wide mouths. The foghorn noises intensified, along with the screaming, which was revealed to be coming from a small man with the same hooked staff and unruly dark hair as the female herder.

“Kausi, yuh shul!” The woman, Sen, skidded to a halt in front of him, grabbing the front of his tunic. She began shaking him, berating him in Velothi, while he continued to howl, and gesticulate towards the animals.  
  
Shani made a frustrated noise in her throat. “Sen, the GUAR!”  
  
“Yenammu!” A woman in a long skirt with stoneflower braided haphazardly into her hair ran up, breathless. “Sa'eth ushalla bel-Yenammu!! Zuda'eth?” She ran towards the half-crushed yurt, but before she could reach it, Shani grabbed her arm, dragging her away.  
  
“Hold on to Kammu!” she yelled to Iriel, pushing the woman into his arms. “She thinks Yenammu might still be in his yurt, but it’s too dangerous to get close! Ugh, why can’t those idiots herders fix this instead of shouting at each other! SEN!!!” She ran forwards and began trying to prevent the furious Sen from shaking her hysterical brother Kausi to death.  
  
Iriel found himself holding onto an extremely distressed Velothi woman, intent on mounting a dramatic rescue mission. Kammu struggled and elbowed him in the stomach, calling for Yenammu.  
  
He was about to lose his grip, when Mamaea arrived and pinned Kammu’s arms in hers with a practised movement. “Will someone  _do_  something!” she exclaimed. “Where in Oblivion are the hunters when we need them?” She turned to Iriel. “Are you a mage? Someone needs to take down those guar. Or are you as useless as the rest of them?”  
  
“No!” Kausi broke free from Sen at this, and ran over, waving his hands. “No no no! No killing, no no no! Not blighted, just spooked, please no, they will calm, I can calm them if I can just get them roped, please!”  
  
“I can  _try_  calming them,” Iriel said, hesitantly. “I’ve never used the spell on an animal, but…”  
  
Before he could begin, a black-haired young man with a half-hearted beard appeared at his side, and, faster than Iriel thought possible, readied his bow and loosed an arrow clear into the chest of one of the guar. It keeled over with a long, whining squeal like a punctured inflatable, and Kausi, making a not dissimilar sound, launched himself at the archer, headbutting him in the chin. Out of the corner of his eye, Iriel saw Shani clap a hand to her face in despair.  
  
Deciding he had nothing to lose, Ire shot a calm spell at the remaining guar. It paused in its onslaught of stamping and head-swinging, and stared vacantly, drool seeping out of its open mouth. Spotting her chance, Sen hooked her staff through its harness, and pulled it clear of the yurt. Someone passed her a rope, and she quickly secured it to a stake.  
  
Elsewhere, Mamaea had released Kammu in favour of trying to prevent Kausi from strangling the unfortunate archer, whose name, judging from the way Kausi kept screaming it, was Rakeem.  
  
“It was blighted!” Mamaea insisted sternly, trying to prise Kausi’s fingers from Rakeem’s ears.  
  
Kausi was having none of it, tears pouring down his tattooed cheeks. “So was he!” he howled, pointing to Iriel. “But you heal him! You heal the n'wah, but not my own Rilki, my baby!” He indicated Rakeem with a shaking finger. “Murderer! My Rilki was worth ten of you!” He fell to his knees and began scraping up the dirt, rubbing it into his hair and face. “Aiiiiiiiiiiiii… AAAAAAAIIIIIIII!!!”  
  
Mamaea sighed. “He does this every time we have to kill any of them,” she remarked to Iriel. She helped Rakeem to his feet, and began checking him over.   
  
Kammu was pulling aside pieces of guarhide, wailing, until a skinny, long-haired man in a torn tunic wandered back into camp and walked up behind her. She gasped and threw her arms around him, as he stared around in confusion.  
  
“Yenammu, where were you?” Shani called to him. “Kammu nearly got herself trampled to death over you!”  
  
The newcomer scratched his head, absently. “Sen rebuked me for singing The Ditch-Drowned Babe outside Nummu’s yurt, but I cannot take it out of my head, so I go to sing on the beach. Where… where is my yurt?”


	73. promise

“Steady. Don’t let her have it all at once, or she’ll dribble it everywhere.” Sen nodded in approval, as Iriel carefully poured the last of the potion into the guar’s mouth.  
  
“Good girl, Pasha,” he whispered, as he let the calm spell lapse. To his relief, she only paddled her feet on the ground, and made a low crooning noise.  
  
Sen let her breath out in a rush. “Not bad,” she said. “I’ll not trust in it till tomorrow, but if she keeps like this, Kausi will only need to mourn one of his babies. We owe you for this, outlander.”

“I barely did anything.”  
  
“Not just the spell. You got the blight potion from Mamaea. That’s not something she’d usually spare on a beast.”  
  
“I really have no idea why she’d give it to me, but not to you.”  
  
“Guest-right. She can’t refuse a reasonable request without it reflecting poorly on her duty as host, see?”  
  
“Are you saying you and Shani tricked me into blackmailing her?” Iriel was mildly appalled, but let it go. He was relieved the guar was improving. This one, Pasha, was oddly endearing, close up. She burbled gently, and swung her head back and forth, trying to see him out of each eye in turn.  
  
“Is everything in order here?” An elderly Dunmer with a pronounced limp shuffled slowly towards them, leaning on a staff.  
  
Sen nodded. “Saveth shulli, gulakhan.”  
  
“Who was that?” Ire whispered, as the elder hobbled off. “Your ashkhan?”  
  
Sen shook her head. “We don’t  _have_ an ashkhan,” she muttered. “We have only a pack of useless gulakhans who can’t stop embarrassing themselves in front of outlanders.”  
  
“A gulakhan is what, exactly? Um, please stop me if I’m asking too many questions, I don’t wish to offend.”

Sen gave a harsh, barking laugh. “Offend? You’re the one who should be offended. You’re a guest, and this is how you find us. Pushing each other into the dirt, barely able to control two blighted guar.”  
  
She stroked Pasha’s nose and sighed. “The gulakhans are the ashkhan’s seconds, his commanders. When an ashkhan dies, the tribe will usually choose his successor from among the gulakhans. But which of  _our_  gulakhans could lead the tribe? The ashkhan is a war leader, someone the warriors can respect. But you saw Dutadalk just now, he can barely walk. Didn’t even make it out of his yurt until the guar were already dealt with. Now, I respect an old champion as much as anyone, but Dutadalk was never a champion. And as for the other two, Kausi and Yenammu…” She rolled her eyes up to her thundercloud thatch of brows and shook her head.

“The ashkhan should be like a father, caring and protecting. My fool of a brother, Kausi doesn’t care about anyone without a tail and a rhalk-sack. The ashkhan takes the welfare of the tribe upon his shoulders, accepts the burden of leadership. That s’wit Yenammu would rather sing pretty songs about tragedies than face up to our real troubles. He once said he’d jump off Tel Vos before he’d be ashkhan, and that was the smartest thing he ever said. So we have been two years with no ashkhan, and our wise woman speaks for us as best she can.”

“The wise woman can’t be ashkhan?”  
  
“She’s already the wise woman! And no, there should be two, there must be balance. Male and female, ashkhan and wise woman.”  
  
“How very… um…” Ire tried to be diplomatic. “Could a woman be an ashkhan, or a man perform the role of the wise woman?”  
  
Sen shrugged, her face sour. “Don’t know. Maybe in other tribes. This is how we’ve always done things. Still, the wind is worsening. Some say we must change or die. Me, I see to the guar. They make more sense than people. Kausi and me, we’re not so different.”  
  
  
  
The sun crept lower. People began to gather round the central fire, building it higher. Then a whistle rang out from the camp boundary, and there was a chorus of shouts. The hunting party had returned. Iriel sat in the shadow of a yurt, watching four men and a woman stride in, bloodied but triumphant, dragging a kagouti.  
  
Shani came and sat down next to him. “That’s my auntie Gunta!” she said, proudly. “She’s really strong. I wish she’d been here when the guar went crazy. The one with the long spear is Mabarrabael, Mamaea’s husband. The two behind him are Addammus and Ulabael. And the redhead at the back is Zallit, carrying the tail, as if that even helps anyone, the scuttlehead.”  
  
“I really should go,” repeated Iriel. True, he was ravenous, and true, he had been invited to stay for the evening meal, but he couldn’t help feeling unnerved by the sudden change in the camp atmosphere, even if there were fewer warriors than he’d feared.  
  
“Don’t be silly,” Shani was saying. “These are my friends. Hey! Ulabaaaeeel! Come and say hello to Iriel!”

A lanky young hunter with flowing black hair peeled away from the rest, and strolled over, an easy grin spreading across his face. “Greetings, outlander! Bless and be blessed. It is an honour to finally meet you, and welcome you to our camp.”  
  
Shani snickered. “Oh stop it, Uli. He’s my friend, you don’t need to talk to him like he’s a missionary!”  
  
Ulabael laughed, nodding, and leaned in to hiss at her, “Jaaaah, Shani, tuda'eth vassith, geh?”  
  
She erupted into giggles, as Iriel’s bones turned to ice and his blood to acid. He levelled an unblinking stare at Ulabael. “Vassith?” he said, evenly enunciating every letter.

Ulabael’s face became that of a man who just inadvertently elbowed someone else’s kitten into a wood-chipper. “Oh,  _shit_. You… don’t speak Velothi. Do… you?”   
  
Iriel didn’t break his steely eye contact.  
  
“I am SO SORRY!!!" Ulabael began talking very fast, as Shani fell sideways, laughing uncontrollably. "I didn’t mean it, I was joking, it’s all Shani’s fault, she said you were and I told her she was full of shit for thinking she could even tell, so I said that as a joke, but I didn’t think you knew that word, I’m so sorry, please don’t tell Adds I called you it, or he’ll make me sleep outside tonight!”

  
Ulabael spent the rest of the evening, to Ire’s great embarrassment, in full-on devoted host mode, bringing him endless plates of roast kagouti, and continuing to apologise until Iriel started to feel he needed to apologise in return.  
  
  
At the end of the meal, a message came via the small girl, Nrhinna, that the wise woman, Sinnammu Mirpal, wished to see him. “Relax,” Shani said. “She knows you’re an outlander, she won’t expect you to know the rules.”  
  
“But I want to know the rules!” Ire insisted frantically. “What should I do, to be polite? Are there words in Velothi I should say? And don’t try to teach me something that means ‘hi I’m Iriel and I’m a huge vassith’, because that is the  _one_   _thing_  I will recognise.”  
  
“Oya, ha'eth Iriel, maran vassith, ha.”  
  
“Thank you, I’m sure that will prove useful under completely different circumstances. But what should I say  _now?_ ”  
  
  
As it turned out, he didn’t need to say anything. Entering the wise woman’s richly decorated yurt as respectfully as he could, he bowed nervously to the elderly woman inside. She nodded solemnly in return. Her white hair was ornamented with carved bone and shell trinkets that interacted musically as she moved.

Before he could begin his planned thanks, she held up a hand in a polite request for silence. He stood, trying not to fidget, as she regarded him silently for some time, an expression of concentration on her face. She raised her eyebrows, and rubbed a finger across her lips, pensively. Finally, she met his anxious eyes and smiled. Then, with another nod, and motion of her hand, she dismissed him.

Shani laughed, when he told her. “That’s our Sinnammu,” she cackled, “always playing the mind games.” He wasn’t reassured.  
  
  
It was almost dark when he and Shani finally left the camp. She had offered to guide him part of the way back to the Kaushibael camp, on the grounds that she “used to make this journey in the dark all the time.” She danced through the grass on her toes, chanting softly, “…shaaaanishilaaaabi, shaaanishilaaabi…”  
  
“Is that your full name?” enquired Iriel, slightly bemused by this display of whimsy.  
  
“My name is right now!” she said, happily. “Shani means dark and shilabi means light, and together it means twilight, which is now!”  
  
They moved through the burgeoning gloom, she stepping light and silent, he stumbling noisily over the uneven ground. Once, his foot skidded on something smooth and curved in the grass, which hissed and scuttled away. Shani laughed at his whimpering distress. “Azura’s star, it’s only a shalk!”

“Tell me something,” he said, at one point, the darkness making it easier to broach an awkward subject. “Why did you tell Ulabael I was gay? I’m not cross about it, at this point, I’m just sick of wondering what makes every living soul I encounter immediately jump to this conclusion, regardless of race or culture. Xarxes knows I wasn’t even conscious for most of the time you’ve known me. So… what the fuck? Do I have a sigil thaumabranded onto my forehead, visible to everyone but me?”

She snorted. “No. But you never noticed that the tunic I was wearing when I cut your hair showed my breasts whenever I leaned forwards.”  
  
“It did?”  
  
“See!”  
  
“Do you seriously think that me not looking down your top is irrefutable proof I’m not interested in women?”  
  
“Ah, but you weren’t deliberately  _not_ looking down it, either!”  
  
Ire remained incredulous, but there was no arguing with the triumph in her voice, and he let the matter drop.

She had chattered away amiably for most of the journey, but as they drew nearer to the coast, Shani’s words became less frequent, and her silences longer. Finally, as they reached the beach, she stopped walking. “We’re almost there. Follow the sands west. I’m not going any closer. Mashti scares the blighted shit out of me, and bumping into Julan’d be even worse.”  
  
“It’s fine,” he said. “I can find my way, from here. Thank you for your help.”

“Wait.” She twisted her mouth, hesitant. “You said he told you. About being Nerevar. You meant what you said, right? You’re trying to make him stop?”  
  
“Yes, if I can. Is there anything you can tell me that might help?”  
  
“I can tell you he’s not Nerevar! It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard! Babies don’t come from rocks, you know, whatever Mashti says! But she has him brainwashed! As soon as she found out he’d even told me about it, she made him break up with me! That fetcher, after all the years we’d been…” She exhaled sharply. “That wasn’t the real reason he did it. He used her as an excuse. I’m not deluded, like  _some_. I know it’s over, I just…" 

The moonlight betrayed the tears spilling down her cheeks. "He’s going to die. And I should want that, but I tried, and I can’t. It’s his fault. When he was my best friend, I loved him, and it was fine. But he always had to make everything so dramatic, when it didn’t need to be. He made love get all wrenching and awful, tense like a knife to the throat. All life and death, sunrise and starlight, nothing just normal any more. And he infected me with it, and I got crazy and stupid, like a blighted guar somebody ought to have shot.  
  
“Then he got better, and I didn’t. It shouldn’t be allowed to work that way. And I hate him, because that’s his fault too. It’s his fault I’m still sick, but it’s not because he deserves it, he’s a smear of dried racer-poop. It’s because he made me say all those stupid things under the stars, he tricked me into showing him all the weird secret thoughts I never showed anyone else. And now he’s still got them, and I can’t get them back. Ugh!”

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I guess I lied, before. I do want to know what he’s been doing. Is he all right? Is he still drinking too much?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” admitted Ire. “Honestly, he’s been looking after me more than I’ve been looking after him, but…”  
  
“I’m glad he has a friend. No one else around here gives a scrib about him. Please stop him. I know he won’t listen to anyone except  _her_ , but please try. Promise you’ll try to keep him safe? And don’t you dare tell him I said any of this. I still have my pride.”  
  
“I promise.”   
  
At his reply, she nodded, threw her arms around his waist in a brief, awkward, hug, then turned and ran, vanishing in seconds.  
  
  
  
As Iriel approached the Kaushibael camp once more, he began to catch raised voices on the wind. Julan’s voice was loudest, but his words were defensive. “You don’t understand!” Ire heard, and “No! That’s not true, why do you always–”   
  
The other voice, Mashti’s, presumably, was quieter, and Iriel could only detect her tone, which was harsh and full of bitterness. As Ire got closer, though, Julan’s voice became drowned out by what sounded like a stream of insults. Iriel didn’t understand half of the words, but “s'wit” he knew, and “disobedient fool”.  
  
Suddenly, Julan barrelled out of his mother’s yurt backwards at high speed, staggering to a halt on the beach. He saw Iriel. “Uh… hi,” he said, quickly straightening his posture and smoothing his hair back with an agitated hand. “Um… good to see you. My mother and I have been… discussing matters, and… we’ve come to the conclusion that… she will enter a sacred trance tonight to consult with Azura, and… that…”

Suddenly his composure failed, and he practically ran over to Iriel. “SHEOGORATH’S TEETH, IRE!! Where in Oblivion have you BEEN, I’ve been STUCK here with her for DAYS, I’m LOSING it, for Azura’s SAKE don’t DO that to me you don’t KNOW what it’s been LIKE!!”  
  
“Sorry,” said Iriel.


	74. madness

Iriel was still getting used to sleeping in yurts. Inside the dome of heavy skins, all enclosed darkness and smothering heat, he felt dim echoes of being in the womb. On reflection, he suspected most wombs had fewer empty bottles, pieces of broken armour and plates of mould-covered crabmeat scattered around. Julan had cleared away the worst of it, with embarrassed mutterings about not usually having guests, but it still had a chitinous bombsite look to it, and walking barefoot was treacherous.

It was a warm night, for Evening Star, the hot volcanic winds blowing north-east from Red Mountain. The circular opening in the ceiling let in a little air, but no breeze. He had asked if they could leave the entrance flap open, but Julan warned against it, saying they’d be likely to wake up with curious kagouti trampling them underfoot. Iriel found that the heat and strange surroundings led to disturbing and vivid dreams.  
  
Someone was leading him by the arm as he stumbled, helpless, through a sea of dead faces. Blank, voided eyeholes, staring at him mercilessly.  The one leading him had a metal face. Fathomless, smiling, it dragged him onward through the crowd, displaying him to the mask-like skulls, one by one.  
  
Voices rang against his head in a senseless assault. Something was expected of him. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even breathe. He tried to scream, but had no air, no voice. He had nothing, was nothing, silent, silenced, negated, lost.  
  
His mind awoke before his body regained itself, and for long seconds, he was trapped in an immobile corpse, as if he had somehow cast Paralyse on himself in his sleep. His lungs wouldn’t work. Finally, he wrenched free and sat up, wheezing painfully, his tunic soaked with sweat. He pulled it off, and pressed it to his face until his breathing was quieter.  
  
He crawled to the entrance, and leaned out. The cooler air was a blessing to his skin, but the midnight seascape was not reassuring. The moons shone ominously through reddish smears of blight-cloud that tinged their light morbid and unwholesome, turning the sea black and the earth the colour of dried blood. There was an ashy, sulphurous scent on the breeze.  
  
Behind him, Julan moaned, and twitched in his sleep. Hair stuck damply to his furrowed brow, and his ribcage rose and fell in a tense, irregular rhythm. Iriel gazed at him, wondering where he was. Nowhere good, that much was clear.  
  
Ire was considering whether he ought to wake him, when Julan sat up with a hoarse exclamation, blinking at half-seen terrors, until he gradually focused on reality, and Iriel in the doorway. “Sheogorath… not again,” he gasped between ragged, uneven breaths.  
  
He took in Ire’s haggard face. “You, too?” Ire nodded grimly, the reddish light hollowing pools of shadow beneath his brows and cheekbones.  
  
Ire let the door fall closed again, suddenly nauseated by the moonlight, although thin strands still crept through the smoke-hole. Clearing a path through the detritus, he dragged his bedroll over to Julan’s, seized by an irrational urge to whisper. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Julan’s eyes glowed dimly crimson in the ash-grey of his face. The words,  _Azura’s curse_  floated into Iriel’s head, and he pushed them out, crossly. “I… I can’t, not yet, ” Julan muttered shakily. “It’s too close… I can still feel them everywhere, still feel…” He trailed off, fingers curling, digging his nails into the skin of his bare arm. “Tell me yours, first. However bad it was, it’ll be a distraction from mine.”  
  
Iriel’s dream must have lost its terror in verbal translation, because Julan only huffed, and said “You dreamed you were at a party? Trust you to consider that a nightmare. I’ve never even been to a party. Not that I’d want to,” he added quickly. “That stuff’s for rich city s'wits.”  
  
“It wasn’t just that it was a party,” Ire protested, but he knew he’d never be able to explain, and gave up. “What was your nightmare?”  
  
There was a long silence before Julan replied. “It was a Red Mountain dream. A… soul sickness dream. I’ve had them for years, I should be used to it, but… this was bad, even so. There… there were ash things, and whispers, and my skin falling off and my body growing monstrous, but none of that was the really bad part. The bad part was when they started pushing my thoughts out of my head, and putting… other things in there. Terrible things, horrendous, depraved… Things I would never think, or want, normally, but in the dream, I… And then I woke up in here, or I thought I did, but they were still there, and I was still… and then that was a dream, and I woke up again, and I… still don’t know what’s real. If I’m awake, if my mind is my own, if… if I…”  
  
His voice began to unravel, and his hands made vague, clutching gestures. His eyes found Iriel’s face in the gloom. “You said once you’d been told you were mad. What did you mean?”  
  
Iriel met his frightened gaze with an uneasy one. “I find that ‘mad’ is an extremely vague, and frequently misapplied word,” he said carefully. “I’ve encountered it in relation to myself on a number of occasions. Sometimes for something as simple as a difference of opinion over travel arrangements.”  
  
“Um. Sorry.”  
  
“And sometimes at times when I… really was losing control of myself. After I was arrested… when I was first imprisoned, I… I’m not going to go into detail, but I can only assume that… it’s why I wasn’t executed. Murderers are usually condemned to death. But they said I was mad, and therefore not responsible for my actions. And… that made me laugh, because it was true that I wasn’t responsible, and true that I was mad, but the cause and effect were the other way around.”

“But… you got better, didn’t you? You’re not mad any more.”  
  
“I don’t know. It’s not… that’s not a simple question. It’s not a matter of one thing or another, sane or mad. It’s a matter of degree, and… there are different states, and some days I feel closer to the brink than others.” He felt strangely neutral about it all. “I’m trying to come to terms with the fact it may always be like this, for me. That it’s not something that’s going to get better. Sorry, I know that’s probably not very comforting. If it helps, I don’t think what you’re dealing with is the same thing.”  
  
“You mean… because your madness is coming from the inside, whereas mine is coming from the outside, from Dagoth Ur?”  
  
No! Because yours is some kind of paranoid delusion, caused by isolation, indoctrination and pressure from that terrifying mother of yours! …is what Iriel was thinking. Out loud, all he said was: “I’m no expert.”  
  
Julan lay on his side, unmoving, eyes blank.  "I don’t want to go mad. But I can’t fight it. I don’t know how you fight something like that. How do I make myself strong enough?“  
  
Ire lay across from him, lacking the right words.  _I don’t know, either. I don’t know if you can. And I don’t think I can be strong for you. It’s not as if I can manage being strong for myself._

He looked at the moon-touched contours of Julan’s tense, miserable face and sighed.  _What do the reasons even matter? Pain is pain._  Shuffling closer, he pulled him into a hug.  _I wish I had easy answers, but this is all I have, right now._  
  
Ire felt him flinch, surprised by the sudden contact. And then slowly begin to relax, his head against Iriel’s shoulder, breathing a long sigh into his neck. "Thanks, I… thanks.” His arm curled around Ire’s back.  
  
Then things got confusing.  
  
_Um. It’s been several seconds now, I should probably… oh Aedra, perhaps this was a bad idea. Wait. What is he…??_  
  
Everything was darkness and heat, sweat-edged skin weighting his chest with sudden breathless pressure, blind hip-snaking fingers, artless collarbone teeth and Ire dug reflexive nails into a shoulder-blade cliff-edge, because he was falling, borne down into a  _tangled ash-blight red-death maelstrom of this delusional Dunmer and I can’t… I can’t take on his madness as well as my own, it’s too… oh gods what’s he doing, no… no, no, no, no, Iriel. You don’t want to be caught in this trap. You don’t want this stupid, mad boy, you want someone who is going to take care of you_ , _and get your life back on… on… oh… fuck…_  
  
He opened his eyes, but saw only a corpse-god moon staring down at him through the hole in the roof, and he was gripped by the sudden terror that it was coming closer, plummeting down directly onto him.  
  
“No!” He sat up, shoving Julan off in a panic. “NO! What in Oblivion do you think you’re doing? I was only trying to comfort you, I wasn’t… I didn’t mean you should start… since when do you even… just…  _no!_ ”  
  
Julan was breathing heavily, unable to look him in the eye. “Sorry,” he muttered, and turned away, rolling over to face the wall of the yurt. Iriel moved his bedroll back to the other side, and lay, immobile in the darkness, heart racing.  
  
Morning took a lot longer to arrive than either of them would have preferred.


	75. armour

“All night long, I have prayed and waited, waited and prayed. And at last, Azura has sent her guidance to me.”  
  
Mashti stood like a small iron statue in the perpetual gloom of her yurt, the only illumination a greenish light spell hovering over her alchemy table. Despite her height, she jutted her chin firmly upwards in an attempt to look Iriel in the eye.   
  
Julan, who had been gone when Ire awoke, was sitting off to one side, hunched in his bonemold armour on a too-small stool. He hadn’t looked up when Iriel entered, and continued to glower at the floor.

Seeing them together, in the mage-lit darkness, they looked strangely similar, a matched, mismatched pair. The same red eyes emitting the same menacing stare, albeit in different directions. The same simmering power, held in abeyance behind the mabrigash’s folded hands, and her son’s tensed muscles. At the same instant, they turned to look at each other, and their eyes conveyed something unspoken that Iriel couldn’t fathom. He felt utterly foreign, an interloper to the intense, claustrophobic nature of this relationship. He suddenly understood why the Ahemmusa were so frightened of them.  
  
“Outlander,” Mashti intoned. “I have spoken with the Daedric Prince who guides me in all matters concerning my son. She has informed me that you may be trusted, and that you may yet be important to the fulfilment of the prophecies.”   
  
Iriel tried to look trustworthy, and not look as unconvinced as he felt, because however little credence he might give to Mashti’s visions, her gaze was like having a fork dragged down every nerve in his body.

“My son,” she continued, casting her eyes sideways onto Julan, “has chosen to disclose the secrets of his sacred duty  to you.”  
  
Ire saw Julan flinch slightly, and remembered the bitter arguments he’d overheard the night before. Mashti didn’t seem keen to reopen hostilities, however, only twisting her small mouth slightly, before moving on.  
  
“As an outlander,” she said, “you cannot hope to understand the importance of his mission, but I hope you will be able to try, for your own sake. The gods deal harshly with those who would stand in the way of destiny.”  
  
Iriel wondered if he was supposed to say something, but aside from his own reluctance, Mashti showed no sign that she required his input. “I understand you have been training my son,” she said next. “In faith, I myself can see improvements in his skills. Perhaps you have truly been sent to aid him on this difficult journey. If this is so, then I give you a choice.”

Her knuckles clicked as she flexed and relaced her fingers, long nails catching the firelight. Iriel saw why Shani had compared her to a Hunger, and was seized by the terrible urge to giggle. “A choice?” he asked, trying to focus.  
  
She nodded. “You can continue to support him as he carries out the work of his destiny, in which case you shall be rewarded with all the gifts the gods can bestow.”  
  
“Or?”  
  
“Or betray him, and I shall call down the curses of a thousand vengeful ancestors upon you, and we shall hound you, waking and sleeping, until the end of your brief, miserable life.”  
  
“I see.”

Mashti apparently took this as agreement on his part, because she smiled… at least, she moved her mouth into a position Iriel thought was probably supposed to be one. “Good,” she said. “I am glad we understand one another. For the present, continue to train together. I shall let you know when the time is right. Now, go.”  
  
  
  
“What in Auri-El’s name was that all about?” demanded Ire, once they were away from the yurt and out of earshot. “She didn’t give you any advice, she just tried to intimidate me!” _It worked, too, ugh._

Julan was trailing several yards behind, still doing everything he could to avoid looking at Iriel, or acknowledging his existence in any way, aside from the fact he was following him.  
  
“Julan, are you listening to me?” Receiving no reply, Iriel huffed and continued on.  
  
Halfway down the beach, he stopped walking and folded his arms. “So, we’re just not going to talk about last night, is that it?”  
  
Julan’s already tightly-wound tension threatened to immobilise him. “Fine,” he choked.  
  
“No!” retorted Ire. “It is  _not_  fine, which is why I want to talk about it.”  
  
“I’d rather not.”  
  
“Well, too fucking bad. What… what possessed you to think that… whatever the fuck you thought you were doing, was what I wanted? You know how I feel about Kaye! You’ve never given me the slightest indication that–”  
  
“Shut up! Just shut up! It was a terrible mistake, a moment of madness, and I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Oh, we’re blaming madness, now, are we? Funny how  _my_  madness never made me jump all over people and grope them without warning!”  
  
“I  _said_  I was sorry. Sheogorath, what more do you want?”  
  
“I want to know why! What’s going on, here?”  
  
“Nothing’s going on! I was confused! The stupid Red Mountain dreams were messing with my head, that’s all!”  
  
“Julan, are you seriously telling me the devil made you do it? Oh my gods… is… THAT what you meant by hideous, depraved things?! Because–”  
  
“No! That part was all your fault! Always flirting, and, and… making me think about… that stuff all the time!”

“I… wh…” The ice again, sliding between his ribs, but he clung to his anger and stayed afloat, kept going. “I told you my flirting didn’t mean anything, and I made you what, exactly? I put gay thoughts in your head? So fucking what? I’m not contagious, you know! If you found you liked it, that’s not my fault!”  
  
“I don’t! I’m not…”  
  
“Not a  _vassith_ , is that it?”  
  
“I didn’t say that.”  
  
“You didn’t have to.” He whirled around and strode off ahead, refusing to let Julan see how close he was edging to the brink of tears.  
  
 _You knew this would happen, what did you expect to gain by forcing the issue, you fool? You’re being completely irrational. Stop it right the fuck now._  
  
He marched along the beach, not really knowing where he was going, but the movement helped, and the sea breeze cooled his face, drying any errant tears that evaded his attempts to restrain them. Eventually, though, he ran out of beach, and Julan caught up, shuffling into his field of vision, all shame-filled eyes and sleepless-night hair.  
  
“I’m sorry, OK? I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know anything, except it was stupid and out of line, and I wish I hadn’t. Now everything’s all wrong, you’re angry with me, and I’ve ruined our friendship.”

“I don’t want that,” Ire said, looking down at the sand, trying to keep his voice level. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship. That’s why I had to… to clarify matters, to… to…”  
  
He twisted at a strand of hair, his rearranged parting making it pull against his scalp in an unexpected place. “Because let me be very clear about something. You and me? Would not work. Would  _definitely_ ruin our friendship. I don’t mean to be harsh, and I’m not saying you’re a bad person, but I’m at a point in my life where I need stability. And you… you are many things, but stable is not one of them. I need someone safe. Someone who has enough self-acceptance to not get their neuroses all over me, because Xarxes knows I have enough of my own.”

He risked a glance. Julan’s jaw was clenched silent, his eyes blank. Ire plunged onwards while he still had the steam. “I can’t deal with someone who hates the fact they’re attracted to me, because that hatred is going to make them hurt me. You’re already doing it, and it’d only get worse. It’d poison everything, poison me, and… I’ve been there before, and… it  _did_ fucking poison me, enough that I’m still clawing my way free of it, years later, and  _you_ ,” he paused for a lungful of air, fists balled, “do not get to drag me back there.”  
  
“I know. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m not… I’m not trying to… I don’t know what I…” Julan trailed off miserably. Looking for an exit from the subject, he glanced at the sun. “If… you don’t want me along any more, I get it, but… you should head back to Sadrith Mora. You have a party tomorrow night in Ebonheart.”

Iriel looked blank. “I do? Mara’s arse, is it the end of Evening Star already!?”  
  
“You were gone for two nights at Ahemmusa camp! Why’d you think I was so worried you hadn’t come back?”

“ _Two_ nights? And you didn’t tell me? And I’m seeing Kaye tomorrow?! Auri-El, why didn’t you tell me, were you trying to make me miss it?!”  
  
Julan’s jaw dropped. “But I…”  
  
Iriel wasn’t listening. “Fuck. I don’t even know what I’m wearing, fuck fuck fuck…” He started frantically preparing a Recall spell, and although he miscast it twice, amid a shrapnel-spray of profanity, it caught on the third attempt and sucked him into its sparkly dimensional pipeline.  
  
Julan hesitated for some time, motionless except for the grinding of his teeth. Finally, he sighed deeply and followed suit.


	76. inventory

_One Ancestor Moth silk shirt, stolen from a dead Hlaalu nobleman’s wardrobe, cream and as yet unblemished. So soft and slipping that a finger, ideally a certain person’s, can’t remain still; it is compelled to keep moving, demanding the whole hand become complicit in delicately mapping the contours beneath. This shirt should probably be categorised as a weapon._

_One pair of dark reddish-brown brocade pants, borrowed from an unnamed friend of Helende’s. Actually really nice, and long enough to fit me, albeit a few inches too big on the hips, this to be remedied by the next item._  
  
_One brown racer-leather belt with brass metal buckle, bought from a trader in Balmora, despite Julan’s assertions that the leather was low quality, and the craftsmanship inferior, although those were not the exact terms he used. But since he showed no interest in killing a racer, curing the leather and making me a better one, I ignored him, because I needed a new bloody belt._  
  
_One cloth coin-purse, in pocket, containing one or two small personal items, plus thirty-seven septims. Which is only for travel and emergencies, since Kaye assured me that the Imperial Cult took its celebratory obligations extremely seriously, and I didn’t need to worry about paying for anything._  
  
Sometimes it helped to do this, to list the things he was sure of, to string beads of solid meaning together in his mind as a talisman against the unknown. The undefinable mass of worry, lurking shapelessly in the corners, ready to rush in and overwhelm his internal monologue, if he let it.  
  
_Two brown leather shoes with laces, bought from a shifty-looking Bosmer in the Sadrith Mora marketplace who claimed to be an “artisan of skin”. Which was, honestly, a really unnecessary thing for him to say, and I would not have bought them if I had not been at least seventy-eight percent certain the shoes were guar leather and not some… other kind. Purchased with the money Cosades gave me for bribes and expenses, because I take my small rebellions against authority where I fucking well can._  
  
_One scarf, stoneflower-blue silk with small silver sequins, a gift from Viatrix, who I hear is studying at the Hall of Wisdom in Vivec now. I sent her a note, congratulating her, and promised that next time I’m in the city, I’ll take her out for a lump of dry bread. Anyway, it’s a cold night, and I’m hoping the scarf will keep the wind off when we’re crossing the water to Ebonheart, although I do plan to remove it once I get to the Grand Council Chambers, as I don’t want to be too covered up. Would it look utterly ridiculous if I tied it around my waist? Yes, yes it would, Iriel, don’t even think about it, what are you, a fucking pirate? Perhaps if I–_  
  
“Ire, we’re all waiting for you!”  
  
_One sense of incipient dread in the pit of my stomach, which I would really like to leave in my room, please._  
  
Sottilde poked her head up through the trap-door like an extravagant mushroom. He almost didn’t recognise her with her hair up, and whatever she had done to her eyelids and lips to make them such improbable colours. “Kyne above, you look ravishing!” she said. “He’s going to be all over you. Now come on, or we’ll be late!”  
  
Ire nodded stiffly, and followed her downstairs.  
  
_One amulet, a gift from Kaye, white enamel with inlaid silver decoration, around my neck beneath the scarf. Enchanted with some minor spells to aid concentration, but that’s hardly why I’m wearing it._  
  
Helende nudged Erer Darothril, who was sitting next to her at the bar, and pointed. “Check this one out! It’s no use, Erer, the place has been taken over by the young and beautiful. We may as well retire now.” Ire rolled his eyes at her as he passed, and she cackled. “Are you going to bring your beau over here soon?” she called after him. “We’re all dying to meet him.”  
  
_One choking clot of panic in my lungs that something isn’t right, that I’ve forgotten something, that I’ve done something terrible and am about to be discovered, but I don’t know what._  
  
Tilde’s dress was dark green with flowers, and Iriel rather suspected it to be reincarnated curtains, but the effect was impressive, nonetheless. Julan had his stolen red brocade shirt, some pants that, for once, were not guarskin, and an air of impending suffering. Iriel had spent the morning instructing him in all the things he was expressly not allowed to do at the party, and he had opined that it didn’t leave much left. Still, Sottilde had threatened to make him dance with her, which Ire thought needed to be seen to be believed.  
  
_One fortunately still uncountable collection of hairs, medium brown and lately trimmed by an amateur, albeit surprisingly competent, Ahemmusa stylist. Brushed over entirely to one side in a dramatic sweep, which feels more than just literally over-the-top, but conceals the burnt side. And would no doubt be very impressive on someone who could carry it off. Which is to say, someone other than me._  
  
_One clawing feeling of guilt that I should be happy, that I’ve waited for this date forever, and now I’m about to let my stupid brain ruin it for me._  
  
“Come on, we’ll have to run for it! Helende talked her Mages Guild friend into transporting us, but she won’t wait all night.”  
  
Tilde took his hand, and dragged him out of the door, Julan following. They careened through the streets of Sadrith Mora towards Wolverine Hall, the sunset throwing long, warped shadows from the fungal towers.


	77. old

Guild guide to Vivec, then a ferry across the bay to the Ebonheart docks. It was dark by then. Dragon Square was hung with strings of unlit lanterns, and the steps of the statue of Akatosh were scattered with pale virgin candles, all to be lit after midnight when the new year began. People hurried through the streets carrying baskets of food and wine, heading into houses and taverns. Doors and windows were left open, and singing and talking spilled out from the festivities going on indoors.

“New life for old! New life for gold! Spare a coin for the corpse, sera?”  
  
Iriel recoiled as the urchin lunged forwards holding a grubby cloth hat, already containing a smattering of change. The boy was somewhere between ten and thirteen, probably Imperial or Breton, and dressed in very deliberate rags, carefully shredded at the edges and smeared with charcoal. He was surrounded by half a dozen other children of a variety of races, similarly clothed. Two of them, a gap-toothed Dunmer girl and a blue-speckled Argonian, were pushing a cart. There was a body in it.  
  
“It’s me poor old mam!” the boy grinned. “She’s dead as a Dwarf, so she is!”  
  
Iriel peered into the cart. The body had a sack over its head… no, wait, its head  _was_  a sack. Stuffed solid, with a garish, grinning face painted on. The body was old clothes, straw poking out between the buttons of the stained blouse.  
  
“What in Oblivion are you kids doing with that?” Julan stared, confused and slightly disgusted.  
  
“I told ya, sera, she’s dead! So we’re takin’ her to the chapels to get her resurrected! It’s Old Life, innit! New life for old! New life for gold! Spare a coin for the corpse? She’s gonna need a new dress when she wakes up for the party, dontcha think?”  
  
Sottilde laughed at her companions’ dismay. “Haven’t you ever seen this before? A long time ago, it was tradition that if you took your dead to the Imperial Chapels on Old Life, the priests would resurrect ‘em. I dunno if it was ever true, but it’s just a silly game for the kids now.”  
  
She took a coin from her pocket, and rubbed it between her fingers, grinning at the boy. “Oooh, you’re right, she’s in a real bad way, your mam,” she said. “Whatever happened to make her so very completely dead?”  
  
The children all began laughing and shouting each other down.  
  
“She ate a bun from Lucippus’ dad’s bakery!”  
  
“She was so fat she fell through the floor!”  
  
“She was so ugly Dibella struck her by lightnin’!”  
  
“She was so dirty, they thought she was trash and threw her in the sea!”  
  
“She choked to death on my dick!” piped the smallest urchin, a tiny blonde Bosmer waif of indeterminate gender.  
  
Sottilde and Julan stared at it in horror, while Iriel made small noises behind his hands. Sottilde dropped the coin into the hat. “OK, kids, that’s enough, run along and pester someone else now.”  
  
Already late, they hurried over the stone bridge to the Grand Council Chambers. This would be the fanciest party in town, with every local dignitary in attendance, even those Dunmer who scorned Imperial conventions, but knew which side their political bread was buttered on. Or who appreciated good food and a free bar.  
  
The doorman nodded politely to Iriel, who returned a look of agonised terror. There was something unpleasantly official, legalistic, even, about this process. “Invitations, please.”  
  
Iriel took a breath, preparing to be judged. “I’m… on the guest list.”  
  
“Name?”  
  
“Iriel. Kaye said to… to…”  
  
The doorman checked a scroll, as Ire stood, trying not to sweat through his shirt, a part of him praying he’d be refused, that he could run away, out of the city, melt into the darkness. It wasn’t to be.  
  
“Iriel plus two. Thank you. Have a good evening, muthseras.” They passed over the threshold and into the candlelit hall.  
  
Imperial tradition held that Old Life was a sombre occasion, to be spent in quiet contemplation of the past year, of remembering the dead, reflecting on triumphs, losses and lessons learned. Lighting should be minimal, and music restricted to unaccompanied voices intoning holy prayers in minor keys. Once the midnight bell was rung, the New Life celebrations would begin, the minstrels would break out their party lutes, and the dancing would take over.  
  
In practice, there were considerably more dignitaries and plutocrats in the Council Chambers than there were Cult acolytes, and such important people were not about to wait until midnight to begin having a good time. The lighting and music may have been relatively muted in deference to the occasion, but the hall was ringing with laughter and conversation. The tables were laden with plates of food and bowls of punch, and several attendants were gliding around with trays, offering yet more glasses and tiny pastry confections to the guests.  
  
The  _guests_. Iriel had never seen so much obvious wealth and privilege in one room, and he desperately wanted to vanish.  _What the fuck am I doing here?  
_  
Then he saw the reason, over by the far wall, chatting to an elderly Imperial woman in a red velvet dress. Kaye looked supremely dapper, in a blue waistcoat and gold-coloured cravat, his cheeks shining bronze in the candlelight as he talked and laughed. He hadn’t seen Iriel yet.  
  
Sottilde followed his gaze, and nudged him. “Relax. We won’t cockblock you. We’ll go and find our own entertainment. Good luck!”  
  
He had to stop himself from grabbing her and begging her not to abandon him, but he knew she was right.  _Come on, idiot, seeing Kaye is the whole point of this!  
_  
As Tilde dragged Julan off, Iriel caught his eye. “Remember what I told you!” he hissed. Julan glared sourly at him, but nodded.  
  
In fairness to Iriel, he had imposed even more behavioural rules on himself than on his friend. For example, while Julan’s rules included “no more than four drinks”, Ire was allowing himself no alcohol at all. Not that its absence would bother him overmuch - the rule about not swearing would be harder to maintain. And hardest of all: no spells. He was here to prove that he was a normal, functioning adult who didn’t need bizarre coping mechanisms, who was worthy and capable of entering into a normal, functioning relationship with  _that glorious deity, ugh.  
  
_ As Ire watched, Kaye politely broke off the conversation, making his farewells to the red velvet dress, and casting his eyes around the room. Without quite meaning to, Iriel slid sideways into an archway, and from there, behind a heavy curtain, screening a small side room, off-limits to partygoers.  
  
 _Oops. Um… well, it’s not an illusion spell, so technically, I didn’t…_  He sighed, and massaged his eye sockets.  _Fuck it. It’s so much more pleasant in here than out there. I’ll just take a moment to get myself together, then I’ll go and talk to Kaye._  
  
Ten minutes later, he was almost on the verge of being on the point of nearly ready to leave the sanctuary of the curtains, when he heard Kaye’s warm laughter suddenly erupt on the other side. Then another voice, deep and plummy with a Nordic accent, moving into audible range.  
  
“…eem on edge, friend. You’re not in charge tonight, you know, you’re here as a guest like everyone else! Let go of your troubles! Relax!”  
  
Kaye’s laughter again, a false edge to it, heard so close. “Frik, have you ever known me to stop feeling responsible for everything?”

Silence for a moment, then the Nord again. “I’m over here, man. Looking for someone?”  
  
“Ah, just… I invited a friend, but… I don’t think he’s coming.”  
  
“A friend?” A moment’s pause, during which Ire was sure his heart stopped beating. Then a chuckle from Frik. “Oh, I see.  _That_  sort of friend. Well, it’s about time.”

Kaye groaned. “You’re as bad as my mom. She figured out I was nervous about something earlier this evening. After forty years, I should know better than to try and put anything past her. She wouldn’t let up ‘til I told her. Then she nearly started crying on me! Oh, Kaye! How long has it been since you last had a sweetheart? I’d almost given up hope of it! After what happened to Linus, you threw yourself into your work, and I feared you’d never find anyone to make you happy after I’m cold in my grave! When do I get to meet him?”  
  
He exhaled, half laugh, half sigh. “Stendarr’s breath, I know she does it for love of me, but it’s a little early for her to get herself all steamed up. I’d say meeting mothers is at least  _second_ date material, wouldn’t you?”

Frik was laughing. “How is the old girl doing these days?”  
  
“Better than a month ago, whatever she keeps saying about her grave. The green lichen mix is certainly helping, but I was thinking we might try her on the willow anther one you were telling me about, as well. With Mara’s blessing, she’ll be back on her feet by spring. She was mad as a shalk to be missing the New Life party. I would have stayed in with her, but…”  
  
“You deserve to have some fun, friend.”  
  
“I don’t  _do_  fun. But I have a duty to represent the Cult, and… I gave my word I’d be here.”  
  
“I’m sure he’ll turn up. This is that fragile-looking Altmer with the worried expression, yes?”  
  
“And the beautiful amber eyes. Now that I think of it, I meant to talk to you about him. He listed alchemy as a skill on his application, and you mentioned needing more help. I get the feeling his living situation isn’t too stable, and maybe we could fix that. He’s proven himself honourable. He’s just very shy. It’s charming, to be sure, but… ah, I should have known better than to invite him here. Ah, well.”  
  
Iriel clamped his hands together, trying to stop them trembling. He was terrified of discovery, but unwilling to move away and lose his ability to eavesdrop on favourable reviews of his eyes. The situation didn’t last much longer, however.   
  
“Is that Canctunian Ponius over there, talking to Iulus?” he heard Kaye say, sounding alarmed. “Iulus better not be hounding him over that pledge again. I want to fund a mission to the Ashlanders as much as the next man, but if he offends Ponius by pushing too hard… I better get over there.” Kaye’s footsteps moved away, and Iriel could breathe again.   
  
Ire peered into the dimness of the room he was in, which was large, but packed with furniture, presumably moved to make space for the dance floor. He slumped onto a dustsheet-covered sofa. He was fighting a strong urge to escape out of the window. Everything suddenly felt infinitely more pressure-laden. But running away screaming was at the top of his banned list of activities for tonight. Anyway, leaving now made no sense at all.  
  
 _What’s wrong with you? He’s perfect. You can have a normal life instead of this sad, marginal existence you’ve been eking out. He wants to give you a real job and take you home to meet his mother. Don’t you dare sabotage this.  
_  
 _But… he thinks I’m someone else. Someone who’s normal, just a bit shy. Gods, he thinks I’m fucking honourable. These Cult people aren’t my people, and my people aren’t his people.  
  
_ _Ire, you don’t have people. The Guild aren’t your people. They’re just the only people who would have you. Don’t make a bloody-minded virtue of outsiderdom, simply because it’s all you’ve ever had. It doesn’t have to be that way. Kaye’s like you, he’s gay, or thereabouts, and nobody cares, not even his mother.  
  
he’s not like me, though. i’ve always been a broken piece of something wrong, but he fits. he fits, here.  
  
You could fit here, too. You could exist within a society. You could learn to do that. You could change your life, you could move forward.  
  
_ _nonononononoNOnononoNO i will throw myself out of the window i will THROW MYSELF OUT oF EverTYHNig EveR  
  
_ _Where, then? Where do you want to fit? Reu thought he knew where you belonged, and you snapped at him, but you don’t know the answer either! You can’t just expect to belong somewhere, Ire, you have to try and make yourself fit. File down your broken edges into something that works.  
  
_ _how no no no no no why no no fuck fuck fuck fuck_  
  
Caught in repeating patterns of frustration and despair, he laid his head on the arm of the sofa, closed his eyes, and, quite by accident, neglected to open them again for a long time.  
  



	78. new

A bell rang, and kept ringing. The air filled with cheers and shouts. Iriel, jolted awake, was overcome first by confusion, then by horror and guilt. It was midnight. He’d missed the entire first half of the celebration, and Kaye must think he’d been stood up.

It was several minutes before he felt composed enough to emerge from his hiding place, and longer still before he could do so without being noticed. Finally, he succeeded, and ghosted along the wall into a spot where he could observe the room. Every lamp was now lit, and the minstrels had launched into something bouncy and raucous that had several people dancing already. Sottilde and Julan were nowhere to be seen.  
  
He had cast no spells, but he still felt less than present. Detached, numbing at the edges.  _Fuck no, not now!_ He pinched his arm through the silk till his eyes watered.  
  
“Iriel!” Footsteps, coming closer, and when he turned, Kaye’s dazzling smile burst into his solitude. Warm hands gripped his elbow, the glow of it radiating through his sleeve, the rest of him suddenly cold in comparison. “You made it!”   
  
Ire couldn’t find his tongue. “Yes?” he managed. “Sorry, I…”  
  
Kaye was nodding, slightly too fast. “It’s fine! Not a problem! Good to see you! Listen, I wanted to catch you, so I dashed over, but I’m right in the middle of something with Chairman Petilius, and I can’t leave him hanging. Mind if we head back, so I can finish up? Then I’m all yours.”  
  
Receiving no contraindication, Kaye towed Ire across the room, arm firmly locked through his. Iriel found himself face to face with an imposing Imperial nobleman, his dark hair streaked with grey. He was wearing a heavy gold chain over his elaborate shirt, and an unstable smirk over his hawkish features that hinted he’d already had a number of drinks.  
  
Kaye’s smile flared brighter. “Chairman Petilius, my apologies. Please allow me to introduce our newest Initiate, Iriel of Lillandril.”

“Initiate?” Petilius’ eyes rested on Kaye’s protective grip on Ire’s arm, and Ire’s fingers, nervously pressing into Kaye’s shirtsleeve. His smirk slid into what Iriel could only describe as a leer. “No need to be coy, man. No red-blooded man of the Empire could fault you for taking a pretty young  _pullimer_  like that. I prefer Bosmer, myself. Smaller, y'know, more delicate. With those mysterious dark eyes…”

Kaye’s smile guttered like a wind-blown candle, as Ire’s nails penetrated his bicep. Then he rallied. “Sure. But maybe we could get back to your thoughts on the proposed anti-slavery branch of the Imperial Cult. I understand your concerns, but I really think public opinion is swinging our way on this one, especially in House Hlaalu. And you’re smart to spot the economic advantage of depriving Redoran of free ebony labour. With proper investment, I think we could create something truly beneficial to all.”

“What about the Argonian Mission?” The two men turned to stare at Iriel, who, for his part, looked even more surprised he had spoken. He cleared his throat and struggled on. “They already rescue slaves. Why not help by funding them?”   
  
Petilius gave him a condescending smile that made Ire feel around five years old. “My dear, have you  _seen_  the Argonian Mission? Zenithar knows what they even  _do_  with money. Eat it, for all I know. My enquiries indicated they don’t even keep proper accounts.”  
  
“Helping escaped slaves is technically illegal,” Ire replied. “So having open accounts might not be very wise.”

Kaye’s smile flickered desperately. “I’m sure the Argonian Mission do their level best,” he soothed. “But in my experience, a trained, professional organisation can do far more good. From what I’ve heard, the Mission focus on getting slaves out of the country. All their funds go on ships, and giving money directly to the former slaves. But is that really in their best interests? Slaves often aren’t equipped to handle freedom. Many of them have mental issues caused by years of trauma, many are already addicted to skooma or moon sugar by the time they get to Ebonheart. I’m thinking we can set up half-way houses, skooma clinics, skills workshops. Tools to help them rebuild their lives. Money alone isn’t always the answer. That’s why it’s often kinder to give to the Cult’s homeless fund, instead of the beggars on the street. We see to it that the money is spent on things people really need.”  
  
Iriel was silent. He was thinking about the time he had stumbled over in the middle of St Delyn one afternoon, after foolishly failing to wait until he got home to take the edge off his moon sugar withdrawal. He had been slumped against a wall, waiting for his eyelids to stop melting, when a young Dunmeri woman had tossed him a handful of septims and a pitying look. Then an Ordinator had turned up and kicked him until he dragged himself back to his room. He didn’t remember what he’d spent the money on, but he could guess. Even so, the thought of kindly Imperials giving him blankets and making him attend basket-weaving courses made him nauseous with shame and choked with frustration.  
  
_I never did know what was good for me, though. I might still be on skooma if I hadn’t been forced clean. And then I wouldn’t be here holding his arm, would I?_  
  
Kaye brought his negotiations to a close, smile incandescent as he shook hands with Petilius. Before moving away, the Imperial smiled tipsily and extended his hand in the direction of Iriel’s chest. Ire flinched, but the man’s fingers stopped short of his body, closing around the blue silk scarf he had completely forgotten to remove. “Pretty. Pretty… young… thing.” Petilius’ eyes lost focus for a moment, his brow creasing in puzzlement. Then he blinked, and addressed Kaye. “You have children? Wife? Children?”  
  
Kaye shook his head.  
  
“Don’t,” Petiius said firmly. “More trouble than iss worth. Stick to the pretty  _pullimer_.” He let go of the scarf. Then, finally, he was gone.   
  
Ire’s hand crept to his neck, clutching the embroidered silk protectively, appalled realisation dawning.  _Mara’s arse, I’m buying Viatrix at least two lumps of dry bread when I see her. She deserves it._  
  
Kaye breathed out. “Stendarr’s mercy, I thought he’d never leave.”  
  
Iriel looked stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I shouldn’t have said anything.”  
  
Kaye waved his free hand, dismissively. “Nothing to worry about. I’m sorry to bore you with shop talk when this should be a celebration.”  
  
Ire hesitated, his fingers still kneading Kaye’s arm. “What did he mean by  _pullimer_ , exactly?”

Kaye’s already weakened smile faded entirely. His eyes shifted around the room before he replied. “It’s, ah… An Imperial thing. Not something I personally endorse, and I’d hate you to think it’s how I see our relation, because let me tell you, it’s  _not_. I don’t remember too much about Hammerfell, but my folks didn’t raise me to see things that way. Love between men has its own honour, and I don’t hold with this Imperial fixation on status and labels. It has its advantages, though. It gives us a degree of… freedom, at gatherings like these.”  
  
“I really don’t follow.”  
  
Kaye looked even more uncomfortable. “I’ll explain it later. In private. Can I… can I get you a drink? What are you drinking?”  
  
“I’m not. Um… I mean… water is fine.”  
  
“I’ll go get you some. Don’t move.”  
  
Iriel stood alone, surrounded by noise and revellers, trying not to let it overwhelm him, trying to hold himself together without Kaye’s shielding presence. And yet there was relief, too, in being left alone.

 _He’s lovely. He really is lovely, so why does everything feel so terrible? Is it my brain doing that? How can I ever be sure about anything? Why do I still want to run away?  
  
It’s a party, of course you want to run away, that’s not his fault, keep it together.  
  
Gods, what am I doing here? Who are all these people? Where the fuck did my friends go? I want to go home. _  
_  
__Ugh, I want some fucking wine.  
  
Nooo, no drinking. Drinking is no.  
  
Forget wine, I want skooma. That’d show them all exactly how classy I am. It’s not even on the list!  
__  
It’s not on the list because it goes without saying! Don’t even joke about it. Anyway, where would you get some? Ugh, shut up, Iriel, you’re pure garbage.  
__  
_ Kaye returned, bearing a glass of water. “They didn’t have any out! Had to raid the kitchen myself! Sorry it took so long.” He handed it to Ire, who sipped it dutifully, as Kaye watched him. “You’re sure I can’t get you anything else? No? How about we step outside for some air. You look a touch pale.”  
  
_I don’t know what the fuck I want any more._  
_  
_ The minstrels ended their jig, and switched gears, shifting into a slow, wistful tune. Kaye was looking at him, uncertainly. “Would you… like to dance? Nothing fancy, no steps or patterns, just…”  
  
Iriel looked momentarily paralysed. “Will anyone mind?”  
  
“Not here, not tonight.”  
  
Ire put down his glass, and forced himself to summon a smile. “Then… that would be wonderful.”  
  
  
“I’ve never actually done this before,” Ire whispered, as they joined the throng of people swaying to the gentle melody.  
  
“Music like this, there’s nothing to it,” Kaye grinned. “Move in closer. …That’s it. Put one hand on my shoulder, and the other… there we go. Now, relax.”  
  
The last instruction was the most difficult, what with simultaneously trying not to step on Kaye’s feet, care whether anyone was watching, or get too distracted by Kaye’s sudden extreme closeness, but Ire did his best. After a while, his feet fell into a steady pattern of small movements, his cheek resting against Kaye’s hair. His mind, however, wouldn’t be quieted.  
  
_I should tell him. I should tell him everything about me. See how fucking charming he thinks I am then, let him know what he’d really be getting, with me._  
_  
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. Gods, he feels amazing, can’t you at least sleep with him, before you ruin everything?_  
_  
That’d only make it worse. Auri-El, he wants me to meet his mother. I can’t just use him. I have to know if… I have to be honest.  
  
Not about everything, not yet! Keep your mouth shut, you idiot, have you learned NOTHING from your entire life?!  
_  
He mis-stepped slightly, and Kaye’s arm tightened around his waist, preventing any possibility of a fall, before he himself had even noticed his centre of gravity shifting.  
  
_He deserves to know who I am, before he gets too attached to the person he’s invented. And…_ _I deserve…  
__  
Why do you fuck it up with the nice ones, Iriel, why do you? What the fuck do you want?  
  
__i want him to see me  
  
__you know what will happen  
  
__i know  
  
__but_  
  
The music ended, and Iriel reluctantly let go of Kaye. “Thank you,” he said, sincerely.  
  
Kaye’s smile was slightly bemused. “What’s the matter? You look so serious.  Was my dancing that bad?”  
  
“It was perfect. But I need to talk to you somewhere private. There are certain things I have to tell you.”


	79. tower

Iriel found them on top of one of the towers. Sitting on the battlements, passing a bottle of shein back and forth under the stars. He wasn’t sure what else he’d interrupted, but Sottilde jumped down when she saw him, and hissed something to Julan. Then, with a grin and a pat on the arm to Ire as she passed, she disappeared down the ladder.

“Tilde!” He called after her, reproachfully. He’d rather hoped for her sympathy, over Julan’s awkward diffidence.  
  
Her voice jangled tipsily up to him. “I’m going elf-hunting! ’S a verr’ important Nordic tradishishon.”  
  
“Not like  _that_ , it isn’t!” he protested, but she was gone.

“You OK?” Julan looked down at him warily, one leg draped along the top of the parapet, the other swinging restlessly.  
  
“No.” He let out a sharp breath, and leaned his elbows on the stonework. “I won’t be seeing Kaye any more.”  
  
“…I see.”  
  
“I told him the truth. About me. Some of it, anyway. Enough to… enough. The look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know.”  
  
“I’m… sorry.”

Another breath, expelled more softly into the night air. “Don’t be. I think, when I met him, I… needed someone to have a crush on, that’s all. To distract myself, experiment with the idea of being with someone again. But when it became real, I… I don’t know what was wrong. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps I’m just broken, incapable of appreciating decent men who want what’s best for me. But honestly… what you said you wanted out of love, or even what Maurrie said about her fucking bandit… I can’t imagine feeling that deeply about anyone. I don’t have the capacity any more. I’m in no state to be in a relationship, and I may never be.”  
  
He trailed off, feeling more empty than anything else, too hollow for tears. The invisible walls were descending around him again. He stared down at his hands, touching the stones in the wall, trying to connect the sight to the sensation.  
  
“What did you say to him?” Julan sounded almost angry. “Did you do it on purpose? Make yourself out to be far worse than you are, to push him away, because you don’t think you deserve him?”  
  
“Lie, to make myself sound worse?” Another time, he might have laughed. Now, all he had was distant bemusement. “Why the fuck would I need to do that?”

His thoughts echoed down his drained, vacant psyche until they reached the oozing familiarity of the Pit, and dredged up a thorny mass of hostility. “You should know! You, of all people, should know how terrible I am to be around, how weak and selfish and cruel and…”  
  
He leaned forwards, over the parapet. “In no hurry to contradict me, I see.” Beyond the stones, the air, the sea, the sky.  
  
“What should I say?” demanded Julan. “Would you believe me, if I said I disagreed?”  
  
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried.”  
  
“What if I said, yes, it’s all true, but I like you anyway?”  
  
Iriel tried to throw it back in his face with sarcastic barb of some sort, but it died in his throat. “Do you?”  
  
“Yes!” Julan’s voice was first exasperated, then just tired. “For all the blighted good it does me.”

“You want me?” Ire pushed himself upright, and threw out an arm, mocking and petulant. “Fucking take me, then!”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
“Oh, really? Why ever not? You tried it once, already, as I recall.”  
  
“And you didn’t want me, because you had someone better. Someone safe. You know what, I don’t blame you. But now you’ve screwed it up with Kaye, you’re drunk, and you’re looking to… what? Make fun of me? Punish yourself? I know I’m no catch, but I’m not  _that_  stupid.”  
  
“Fuck you, then.” Ire slumped back onto the battlement.  
  
Everything was moving further and further away. He could feel it happening, but couldn’t stop it. He had left his scarf downstairs, and now the wind was whipping through his thin shirt. Although he recognised the sensation as cold, he had no opinion on it. It was a phenomenon occurring within a distant body that may, or may not belong to him. Things were becoming decoupled: cause and effect, subject and object, action and consequence.  
  
“Sheogorath’s teeth, Ire! You haveno idea how much shit I went through over you. I can’t deal with your weird mindgames any more.” Julan swung his legs inside the parapet. “I’m going home. If this is a party, I’m not impressed. Let me know if you…”  
  
He saw grey stones, dark sky, darker water. Julan’s shirt, neck, braced arms, the stars. They were all equally alien, distant and untouchable. He wouldn’t know where to begin. He was a collection of drifting thoughts and sensory data, and right now, the data was fuzzy and nonsensical. Possibly Julan was speaking to him, but he couldn’t catch hold of it, it was no more distinct than the vague hubbub emanating from the main hall. He closed his eyes, and didn’t see the point of opening them again. He was adrift in nothing, bodiless and selfless.  
  
“..iel! Are you… … sleep? …. … … ou drink?”  
  
With a colossal effort, he forced himself back slightly, blinking, attempting focus. Words were always an early casualty, but he fumbled for them anyway. “Sorry, I… Losing myself. Numb.”  
  
He sighted down the long drop to the rocky coast, trying to feel the dizzy, gravitational pull of it, jar himself into feeling something like self-preservation. He detected no such reaction. He had enough composure to know that was bad.

 _falling is no, Iriel.  
  
i might feel something.   
  
not for long. remember how to look after yourself.  
__  
but… nothing… is… is… fuck… i…  
__  
_ “Julan? Are you still… sorry, I… I do stupid things when I’m like this. Not on purpose, but… I forget why things… why things… I lose the… the reasons not to.”  
_  
he’ll think it’s a manipulative ploy for attention, don’t do it  
  
_ “…and right now, I’m at the top of a tower, and it’s very… space is so… it’s…”  
_  
now, look, he’s alarmed, he thinks you’re suicidal, you’re blackmailing him, stop talking stop talking  
  
_ “You don’t have to do anything else, but…”  
  
_but I’m not okay, and_  
  
“Please just… hold me. And help me not… lose myself. Until… until I… can get back.”  
  
Time passed, though Iriel was incapable of telling how long, unmoored as he was. Then someone took hold of his arm, pulled sharply, and he stumbled forwards into warmth.  
  
He drifted, his mind floating liminal, his body tethered firmly, until the siren winds pulling him into the amorphous grey began to fall. He let the dissolving void pass through him, and when it had passed, he could begin sifting through the textureless ashes to see what was left.  
  
He found things, one by one. The slip of brocade against his cheek. The rise and fall of the chest beneath, gradually reminding him of his own breathing, lulling his lungs into easy synchronisation. A heartbeat, steady in his ear. Perhaps he had one, too, and blood, and veins and… he found he had arms, and could wrap them around… he struggled with the separation of self and other, but only momentarily. Julan… Julan’s waist. And those were Julan’s fingers in his hair, stroking gentle sparks along his scalp, caressing even the burnt bit, and he found he didn’t mind.

His exhausted brain began the emotional equivalent of driving down the wrong side of the motorway.

“I’m sorry I said you weren’t stable,” Ire whispered, when he had enough of himself back to speak. “I’m in no position to judge. I just… I can’t trust anything I feel any more. That time in the yurt, I… wanted you, but…”  
  
He felt the other heartbeat quicken, but Julan only said, “Don’t be sorry. I was out of line, and you were right to think you could do better.”  
  
“Don’t start that again. Can’t we both put our neuroses down for a minute?”  
  
“Only a minute?”  
  
“Well, I’m trying to be realistic, and it’s long enough for you to kiss me.”

A frozen pause. “What makes you think that’s a good idea?”  
  
“Absolutely nothing, but–”  
  
“Ire… stop. You’re not in your right mind. Earlier, you wanted Kaye. Just now, you said you wanted to throw yourself off the tower. What am I supposed to think? You don’t know what you want.”  
  
“I never said  _throw_ myself… and right now, I want someone to kiss me. That’s all.”  
  
“And I don’t want to, if that’s all.”

Iriel started formulating a terse remark about how he wasn’t in any frame of mind for sex, but then the emotion in Julan’s voice caught up with him, and Ire realised that wasn’t what he’d meant.  
_  
Aedra, how could I forget? He’s a fucking romantic. It’d be all or nothing with him, wouldn’t it? And it absolutely should be nothing, because he’s offering more than I’m capable of returning._

He looked up, and saw the same expression of predicted rejection and suppressed hope that he’d seen at Ghostgate, the moment before he’d agreed to let Julan follow him home like a lost dog.  
__  
___Falling is no, Iriel. because we’re not talking love, we’re talking reckless drop into future pain, and you’d be taking him down with you.  
___  
I might feel something.  
  
Not for long.

Sometimes, there are only so many sensible, unselfish choices that a person can make in a row, only so many oncoming cars they can dodge before the lights of the next one, coming from an unexpected direction, fatally dazzle them.

 _oh gods why is he smiling like that?_  
  
“Why are you smiling like that?”  _  
  
never stop smiling like that.  
  
_ “Am I? Gah, I don’t know… I just… Ire, I know you can be an asshole, but I think you’re… really great, and… right now, I get to look at you, and be close to you, and… even if that  _is_ all… it’s still more than I feel worthy of.”  
  
_how fucking DARE you, you bastard, oh my gods_

Ire dragged him off the wall and kissed him then, with every ragged scrap of himself he could pull together, and falling was the easy part, he knew, but if he closed his eyes, he couldn’t see the ground.


	80. safe

Iriel awoke surrounded by an odd, constricting presence that he gradually recognised as somebody else. There were four hands in his field of vision, and the grey ones were only slightly less familiar than the goldish ones.  
  
 _…Oh. Gods. This is going to be… interesting._

Sottilde had returned to the tower some time later, her elf hunt woefully trophyless. (“The most action I got was when a Bosmer waiter spilled a tray of snacks down my front, and helped me clean corkbulb mousse out of my cleavage. But now I smell like a vegetable, and there’s pastry flakes all through my bodice, chafing my nipples something vicious. Can we go now?”) Ire vaguely recalled a giddy descent through the Grand Council Chambers, drawing disapproving looks from Imperial dignitaries, crashing out of the front doors into the black. He hadn’t seen Kaye again on the way, fortunately.  
  
They had intended to Recall, but Sottilde, producing a bottle of brandy from gods-knew-where, had suggested they walk a little first. Reeling out of Ebonheart, they’d found themselves in the Ascadian Isles’ nocturnal dreamscape of twisted mushrooms and echoing kagouti mating calls.  
  
Ire remembered stumbling through the long grass, leaning heavily on Julan. Trying not to dignify Tilde’s gleeful expression and animated eyebrows with a response, until he cracked, and couldn’t help grinning at her. And at Julan, who offered a shy half-smile back, then turned away, and took the bottle.

They had sat on a hillock, watching the stars. Tilde chattering about the party, he conscious only of Julan’s arm around his waist, hand beneath his shirt, hot and sweat-slicked against his ribs. Trying not to focus on that. To listen to Tilde. To not let his mind run away with how a kiss he’d charged into blindly, brutally, taking advantage of someone stupid enough to want him, had veered into unexpected tenderness, and left him somewhere skinless and strange.  
  
He’d finally succeeded at the teleportation spell through a warm, heady buzz of brandy and anticipated touch. On arrival in Sadrith Mora, though, he’d been hit by the aftermath of the magical effort which, compounded by emotional exhaustion, formed a crashing wave of darkness that dragged him down, almost under. Arms catching him.  
  
Up, somehow, to his attic room, falling onto the bed amid limbs that, as they tried to gently withdraw, he had clutched at, desperately. “…don’t go…” Blackness.  
  
 _And now it’s morning, and he’s still here, but how’s he going to react? Even if all we did was kiss, he might go straight into another guilt spiral, he might not… want to… to what, exactly?  
_  
Slowly, experimentally, he moved his hand towards Julan’s until fingertip brushed fingertip. Slid his long, bony, constantly fidgeting fingers between Julan’s firm, scar-threaded, nail-bitten ones. Looked at them, interlaced.  
  
 _What does safe even mean, anyway? None of us are safe. I know I’m not. And everyone I ever thought was safe… it only made it more jarring when they weren’t._

 _What if he takes his regret out on me, says I was manipulative, tricked him into it? I couldn’t bear that again. If that happens, he’s leaving, it’s all over. Which means… this might be the last I ever have of him.  
  
_ Julan shifted, and drew a long, uneven breath, like wind over stones. His fingers twitched, then closed around Iriel’s hand. Ire tried not to move.  _Just a little longer. Don’t let him wake yet._  
  
“…Morning…” slurred a gruff voice, surprisingly close, lips tickling his ear. He twisted, and his cheekbone bumped Julan’s nose. When he found his friend’s eyes, they were sleep-soft, uncertain. “Are you… all right?” Ire heard.

Ire struggled to roll over, wondering how in Oblivion neither of them had fallen out of bed. When he succeeded, his face was in tense proximity to Julan’s. Acutely conscious of each breath of shared air passing between them, he nodded. 

“It’s just… you were crying. In the night.”  
  
Ire looked away, embarrassed. “Oh, fuck. You heard that? I thought I–”  
  
“Cast Silence. I know. I think that’s what woke me, that your breathing and everything went so quiet. Then I felt you shaking.”  
  
“I’m sorry. I woke up, and remembered the whole mess with Kaye, and…”  
  
“Don’t be sorry! I get that what happened with me was a… a stress thing, a rebound thing. I knew it the whole time, I just… look, it’s OK. I can go, we can pretend–”  
  
“No! Please don’t. Last night  _was_  stressful. And confusing, and yes, I did end up going home with completely the wrong boy, but… breaking up with Kaye was the right decision. I just needed to… mourn that, I suppose. Mourn the time I spent hoping it was going to be something else."  _That I was going to be someone else._

"Wait.  _You_  broke up with  _him?_  I assumed…”  
  
“What, that he dumped me for being such a hopeless wreck? Gods, no. He’s far too nice for that. No… I told you, it was the look in his eyes. He would have taken care of me, and I thought that was what I wanted, but… not like that. I would have become his next charity project. He’s kind, and he wants so much to helppeople, but he thinks pity is the same as empathy, and condescension the same as respect. He’d always think he knew what I needed better than I did.”  
  
“Ire, that’s my problem with the whole Imperial Cult.”  
  
“Well, I’m done with it. Even Kaye’s smiles lost their charm when I realised they were little more than a shield he put up.”  
  
“Yeah, but… look… I have no idea what you need.”  
  
Iriel’s amber eyes were warm, half-lidded. “I do.”  
  


“You said it’d ruin our friendship,” Julan whispered into his hair, a few moments later.  
  
“It might.”  
“You said you were in no state to be in a relationship.”  
"I’m not.”  
“You said I wasn’t your type.”  
The briefest of pauses.   
“…I lied.”  
“You did?”

Abruptly, Iriel sat up and regarded Julan through a mess of errant brown strands gradually regaining their natural level after the unaccustomed stylings of the previous night. “If you mean what I said in Ghostgate, then yes. Although, in my defence, you were covered in blood and filth. Even so, yes. I liked you from the start, are you happy? Don’t you remember? I flirted very gently, and you panicked. So I thought, fine, he’s straight, never mind. Erase that thought, move on.”  
  
“You can  _do_  that?”  
  
“Well. Sometimes. It doesn’t help to be travelling with someone, especially someone who doesn’t believe in things like nightwear and proper underclothes. But, yes, usually. I have to! I don’t chase straight boys. Not for their benefit, you understand, for mine. It’s not safe.”  
  
“Ire, I know I was unfair to you, but even if I hadn’t been… interested, I swear by blood and ash I’d never have…  _hit_  you, or…”  
  
“Do you think I’d have been anywhere in your vicinity, if I’d doubted that? And you still… you implied…”  
  
Ire broke off, and frowned, his eyebrows still patchy, post-firestorm, but doing their best to impart an expression of concentration, as he searched for the right words.  
  
“When I was seventeen, my best friend and ostensible fiancée, Firionwe fell out with me. At the same time, my ma fell out with Firi’s ma, who up until then, had been  _her_  best friend, the only upper-caste friend she had left. The completely non-coincidental reason being, Firi caught me messing around with her brother, Valtir. That was bad enough, obviously. It certainly was for Firi, she never spoke to me again.  
  
“But, to make everything even worse… because Val was older than me, my ma insisted that I had been abused in some way. Coerced. Which wasn’t the case at all, but I was too frightened to contradict her. Not that it helped me. I became a complete social pariah anyway, once word got around. Anyone who  _mattered_  believed Val’s family’s version over my ma’s. They were  _nobles_ , y'know. And… well. My mother wasn’t there, and they were. Having to replace the curtain rail, and listen to Firi’s eyewitness account that she’d have absolutely no reason to lie about. The details of which were… incriminating.” He twisted his mouth, mostly grimace, a fraction smirk.

“A year or so later, I met this much older man, Syonilis. He took pity on me one day, when I got cornered by abusive shitheels outside his shop. He took me in, gave me tea, and tried to… advise me, I suppose. That I should learn to imitate straightness, and hide everything else, or society would destroy me. And pretend to like girls, or accept, as  _he_  had, being alone forever. Of course, I said I was going to go to the Crystal Tower, where everything would be wonderful. And flirted with him terribly, because I was young and silly, and I felt sorry for him, and… just because I could, really. He, in horrified tones, told me I was far too innocent and pure to suggest such things, he was a monstrous old fiend, and I had to go home now.

“So I did, but I came back the next week. And he gave me more tea, and we talked, and I flirted more, and he told me off, and it became a sort of ritual. He lent me some books, secret press stuff. They were incredibly depressing and tragic, all shame and secrecy, but at least they told me there were other people like me, out there. Some of them were pretty explicit, too. Very educational. I tried to get him to educate me further, but he wasn’t having it. I started taking my clothes off, to bait him. This was my arrogant brat phase, remember? He never touched me, and was always wearing about eight layers of robes himself, but at some point he gave up trying to stop me. I used to lie on the dusty sofa in the back-room of the shop, in nothing but my waist-length hair, reading. He used to potter about, washing up, tutting at my degeneracy, telling me I’d get him into trouble. He was right, of course. I did.”

Julan was laughing, albeit with a certain horror. “Sheogorath, Ire…”  
  
“The inevitable happened. My mother’s detective work eventually bore fruit, and she stormed in one day, dragged me home, et-fucking-cetera. And then the real battle began, because she swore to  _ruin_  Syonilis, to have his shop closed, run him out of town, have him arrested for… Xarxes knows what, because I wasn’t a child. And this time, I was determined to make it clear to her that he hadn’t coerced me in any way. He wasn’t a predator, he was a sad, shy little man trying to help a lost, lonely fool of a gay boy. People like her, I said, stamping my little foot, had already devastated Syonilis’ self-esteem, and I was not about to let her destroy his life, or mine either.

“And I won, sort of. She gave up, and left him alone, although she barely spoke to me ever again. She’d given up on me, too, you see. I was deemed beyond redemption. I was mostly relieved, and a touch deeply hurt. At least it gave me space to throw myself into my studies, as my only hope then was getting into the Tower and getting the fuck out of Lillandril. I was so scared of ending up like Syonilis. I wanted to prove him wrong, that it didn’t have to be like that. Feeling like a perverted old monster, convinced your desires were inherently damaging to others. And… I know it’s not true, but every time I flirt, and someone reacts with disgust, I…” He shrugged helplessly, looking down at the cream silk shirt he was still wearing. “I’m not as self-confident as I used to be.”  
  
He stared at the silk, dimly wondering where he’d stained it, until he felt a hand stroke his cheek. He shuffled up the bed, and leaned into Julan’s shoulder.  
  
“Do you want to hear something utterly horrendous?” he said, presently. “At the party last night, this awful old Imperial called me Kaye’s  _pullimer_. And later, Kaye very reluctantly explained what that meant. The word literally means ‘elfchick’, apparently, which sounds adorable, but really isn’t. I was so sheltered at the Arcane University, I never had much to do with life outside. I’d begun to think Imperial society was less bigoted than Summerset’s, but it turns out, it’s just differently horrible. In short, it’s permitted, laudable even, for men to fuck other men, but only under specific circumstances. An older, more powerful human, fucking a younger, prettier elf. Fucking, as in penetrating, because in their eyes, it’s an act of dominance. An expression of Imperial power over the conquered nations. With elves, male or female apparently makes little difference to a lot of Imperials, as long as they get to stick it in. They think we all look feminine anyway. We don’t  _count_.”

Julan was making incredulous snorting noises. Ire sighed. “Please don’t blame Kaye, he wanted no part of it either, but by then, I felt tainted by it anyway. Just knowing people were assuming that about us. Last night, after I’d told him it wasn’t going to work… he was such a fucking gentleman about it, but… he asked to kiss me goodbye. And I realised, as I was kissing him, oh gods, I could fuck him right now, he would do that, he would screw me senseless right here on this ugly storage room sofa. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that awful  _pullimer_  thing, and… I was so angry. I felt, in that moment, that it had ruined the whole idea for me. I’d never get it out of my head. So I pulled away from him and left.”

Julan was silent for a moment. “This whole… human on elf… thing,” he said, carefully. “What if it was the other way around?”  
  
Ire rolled his eyes. “I can only assume it’d be scandalous and unspeakable. A virile citizen of the Empire being topped by some effeminate elf would practically be a crime against the Emperor! Because people always interpret two men having sex as involving dominance, coercion and exploitation, never  _mutual_  pleasure, or, gods forbid, love. Somebody’s always got to be forcing themselves on somebody, taking advantage.”  
  
“In my experience,” muttered Julan, “that’s what people expect of men when they’re with women, too. If you believe what they say in the cities, Ashlander men are all rapists, anyway.”

“I suppose so. Ugh…” He glanced at Julan. “Sorry, I know I’m ranting, but… that’s why I don’t often flirt with people I’m not completely sure about. I wouldn’t just be flirting, I’d be being  _predatory_. And any retaliation against me would be justified and socially sanctioned. And much as I’d like to, I can’t magically remove all this shit from my head. So you had better be through with guilt-tripping me, because–”  
  
“I am! I promise! I mean… I’m still working it out to myself, but that’s not your problem. I won’t make you deal with it. I… told Sottilde. She talked some sense into me.”  
  
“You’ve been confiding in  _Tilde?_  Since when? How could she not tell me? Where are her loyalties? …What did she say?”  
  
“She said… that I should tell you.”  
  
“Tell me what?”  
  
“You know what! How much I’d been thinking about you. But… I guess it’s been pretty obvious. I was never much good at subtle.”  
  
“Subtlety is overrated,” observed Iriel, repositioning his hand.  
  
“…Ire…”  
  
“…What?…”  
  
“…Sottilde’s asleep  _right_  downstairs…”  
  
Ire’s demonic grin would have got him fired from hell for over-enthusiasm. “You’ll have to be extremely quiet, then, because a Silence spell wouldn’t be–”

A cheerful voice piped up from below: “Don’t mind me, I’ve been wide awake for ages. You carry on!”  
  
Julan closed his eyes in mortification, and Ire began directing a stream of curse-ridden invective towards the trapdoor, but there was no avoiding the fact they were going to have to get up.


	81. different

By the time Iriel descended the ladder into the cornerclub, he found not only Sottilde there, but Muriel and Helende too. The three of them were arrayed primly around a table bearing a large teapot and a number of mugs.  
  
Helende smiled brightly. Muriel sipped her tea, demurely. Sottilde opened her mouth to say something, but he didn’t find out what, because Julan, coming down after him, took one horrified look, and brandished a finger at her. “NO.” He headed off downstairs at speed, marking each step with another emphatic negative.

Ire was attempting to follow, when Helende called him back. As he watched, she caught Muriel’s eye, and nodded in the direction of Sottilde.  
  
The Breton woman stood up. “Tilde, you come along wi’ me, now. I’ll fetch you out that book I was telling you about.”  
  
Sottilde was about to protest, but Helende gave her a commanding glance, and she reluctantly but obediently followed Muriel from the room.  
  
Helende kicked a chair towards him, stretching out her legs under the table. She was taller than he was, but the loose, greyish drawstring pants she was wearing weren’t even slightly too short. Neither were the sleeves of her sage green wraparound top, of a type normally worn as an underlayer to certain styles of Altmeri robe. He’d have to ask her about her sources. Helende had sources for everything, as well he knew, being one himself, albeit not the most reliable.  
  
He sat, unsure what he was in for. “Good morning,” he offered, and she snorted. “Morning? It’s well past noon.”  
  
“I was up late.”  
  
“I’m well aware. Happy New Life, by the by. How were the giddy heights of Ebonheart polite society?”

Iriel tried to laugh, but what came out was more of a cough. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Oh, stop silkvining,” he said. “What do you really want to know? Ask me and get it over with.”  
  
“The absolute cheek I let you get away with would astonish a lot of people in this guild, you know.”  
  
“But you  _do_  let me get away with it.”

She exhaled loudly and gave him a stern look. Ire, now massaging his forehead, peered at her through spread fingers. “Sorry, boss,” he said, on the off-chance she was serious.  
  
She wasn’t, or at least, shaking her head and chuckling, she wasn’t any more. “Honestly, you come off as even moreinsolent when you’re trying to be deferential. However did you survive, in Summerset?”  
  
“I didn’t.”

Helende gave up on small-talk, and acceded to his request she cut to the chase. “I gather from Sottilde,” she said, “that we shan’t be having Kaye over for cake any time soon.”  
  
Iriel grimaced. “No such thing as private business around Tilde, as ever.”  
  
“Don’t blame Tilde; I pried. I feel responsible for you. If you’re careening over the edge, I want as much warning about it as possible. So. Are you?”

Iriel gave the question proper consideration. “Given the current state of my research into the nature and location of the edge,” he said, “I do not, at this precise moment, believe myself to be in its immediate vicinity.”  
  
“And are you going to stay there, in your extremely edu-ma-cated estimation?”  
  
Ire’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I think so. I’m… being taken care of.”  
  
“Oh yes?” Helende’s face wore a veneer of carefully constructed innocence. “Being seen to, are you?”

For a moment, he thought he might be able to play it cool enough to avoid further interrogation, but the prickling heat creeping up his neck into his face told him he wasn’t fooling anyone. “No!” he said, a quiver of mortified laughter in his voice. “Not around here, with you lot all sitting down here drinking tea!”  
  
She grinned. “It’s ginseng and redwort from Muriel’s secret cupboard of expensively imported dried plant bits. Would you like some?”  
  
“Gods, yes,” he groaned. “I barely ate or drank anything yesterday. Sottilde’s tits got more party food than me.”  
  
  
A few minutes later, there was an almighty crash, as the front door opened so hard it hit the inside wall. Helende tensed, and drew a glass dagger from the panoply of tools at her belt.  
  
A wild, ululating scream echoed up the stairs, accompanied by clattering footsteps, and then a Bosmer appeared. He was thin to the point of emaciation, and wearing a stringy, threadbare vest above grimy pants hacked off at the knee. Straw-coloured hair covered his scalp and pointed jaw in a soft fuzz, but what struck Iriel most were his eyes. They were true Bosmer eyes, fully black from pupil to sclera, and so large and bulbous they appeared almost insectoid. Aiding this was the man’s current expression, which involved opening everything very wide: eyes staring, nostrils flaring, lips stretched tight around bared, clenched teeth of alarming sharpness. He raised his arms like a preacher. “CELEGORN. IS FINALLY. IN THE MOTHERFUCKING HOUSE!!!”  
  
Helende slammed her dagger point-first into the table and squealed. “Cel! Where the stars have you been? I’ve been so worried!”  
  
The Bosmer lowered his arms and stared blankly. “WARNING. CELEGORN. Has-been-locked-in-a-dungeon-by-Dratha-for-a-month-and-is-now COMPLETELY SUGAR FREEEEEE!!!” He spun around in a circle, arms flailing, and knocked a vase off a nearby table. Ire flinched as it shattered, but Celegorn didn’t seem to register it at all.

“Oh dear.” Helende said. “And how does Celegorn feel about that?”  
  
“Like he’s so WIRED he can’t stop TALKING about himself in the THIRD PERSON or MAKE his VOICE STOP DOING the THING.” His hands clenched and unclenched frantically. His nails were very long, and Iriel saw red marks on his palms.

“Should I obtain something to alter this situation for you?” Helende asked.  
  
“Yes! But I don’t want it yet! I have too many WORDS, too many words to get out of my head that built up in the dungeon! Get me some fucking paper!!” He scratched wildly at his bare arms, and Iriel saw that they, along with his legs and visible chest were also covered in silky blonde hair. “Ugh… TOO MUCH HAIR!!!” he shouted. “PAPER, then RAZOR, then SUGAR.”

“Wait, did you say Dratha?” demanded Helende. “I thought you were in Tel Aruhn! No wonder I couldn’t locate you! So where’s Bodu?”  
  
Celegorn stopped moving. “Bodu’s not back?”  
  
Helende shook her head. “He was with you!”  
  
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” Celegorn’s eyes, somehow, became wider still. “Nooooooo! He escaped, he DID, I saw him, so why not BACK, why no Bodu? Aaaaaaaagh… Can’t do this now. Too many words and too many hairs to think!”

Helende was nodding, and using her most reassuring voice. “All right, all right, breathe. Tell me everything later, and I’ll fix it. Don’t you worry, I’m on the case, now.”  
  
Celegorn met her eyes, and nodded. “OK. OK.” He turned and ran back towards the stairs. Then he stopped. He ran back over to Iriel, and grinned with all his teeth. “Hello. Hi. HIII, sorry. I’m a bit… EVERYTHING right now, but hi. Hiiiiii. I have no fucking clue who you are, but I’m sure you’re–”  
  
Helende, seeing the look on Iriel’s face, interrupted the Bosmer’s monologue, dragging his attention away from his discomfited target. “Cel, don’t do that to Iriel. You can talk to him later when you’re less intense. Go on, do your words. Paper’s in the usual drawer.”  
  
When Celegorn had gone, veering and jerking around like a mosquito, Ire raised his eyebrows at Helende. “Sugar? As in…  _sugar_  sugar?”  
  
She nodded. “I don’t keep any in the house, so no getting ideas about finding it. And he won’t be using it in here, either, not with you around.”  
  
“But… why… why in Oblivion does he get you giving it to him, when I get locked in the attic for a week?!”

She yanked the dagger from the table, and carefully replaced it in its sheath, before sitting down again. “Because everyone is different. Cel does better on a carefully monitored amount of moon sugar than he does off it. Do you think that’s true of yourself?”  
  
“…No.”  
  
“From what you’ve told me, I agree. But moon sugar is a substance, not concentrated evil, and Cel’s body handles it differently to most mer. There’s Khajiiti blood in him, we think - and please no cannibalism jokes about that, those don’t go down well with him at all. We tried other things, and the sugar works best. So. You focus on you, and never mind about Cel. And let me tell you something else - if you came to me and asked me to get you moon sugar, I might even do it.”  
  
Iriel looked horrified. “What?!”

“Not immediately, you understand.” She steepled her fingers and regarded him seriously. “I would first require a long talk with you about why you needed it, and what other possible solutions to this need you might try first. But I’m not daft, I know perfectly well that if you decide you want to take sugar, you’ll find a way. Possibly not a sensible one. I’d much rather you were taking it here, where I can keep an eye on you, and help you get clean again, if and when you’re ready. But you’re responsible for staying off it, Iriel, not me, and only you can decide if it’s what you want for yourself. That’s why we were so reluctant to take you in the rather forcible way we did, but Caius gets what Caius wants. Oh!” She knocked her forehead with her fist, and reached into one of her many pockets. “I clean forgot the whole reason I wanted to talk to you. Here, you have post. Don’t worry, it’s not from She Who Must Not Be Named. Fresh orders from His Impertinent Mystery, I think.”  
  
Iriel took the document, but didn’t move to open it. He was staring into space, chewing his lip. “The thing about Kaye,” he said, slowly, “…he was lovely, but… I could never have brought him home to meet you all. Not that he’d have disliked anyone, but… he wouldn’t have understood about things. Do you remember when I first met you, and we were joking about being in a club for embarrassing degenerate social pariahs? Kaye… I don’t think he’d have wanted us to make him one of our badges.”

“It’s not mandatory,” she said, gently. “As I said, everyone is different. You need what you need, and so does Kaye.”  
  
“I know, it’s just… oh, perhaps I don’t know.”  
  
“And what about Julan? Does he want a badge, now?”  
  
Ire’s mouth twisted into a nervous sort of smile. “Possibly. I think he’s still deciding on the exact wording. I’d be tempted to suggest ‘heretical outcast vassith scum’, but I’d want to be sure he’d take it the right way.”  
  
“Well, tell him not to worry. The badges are completely imaginary, so alterations are wonderfully simple.”  
  
Ire thumbed open the seal on his papers. “Yes,” he said, after a time. “New orders from Caius. A research trip. To Vivec. With a deadline of… ugh. I’d better be on tonight’s boat.”  
  
“Oh, that’ll be nice,” Helende smirked. “You can take the boy, can’t you? Have some quality time together. See the sights and explore the attractions, without awful nosy neighbours getting all up in your business.”  
  
“Quite,” Ire replied crisply, as he re-rolled the parchment and sauntered out of the room.


	82. watching

“Then don’t!” Iriel had one hand on his hip, the other pulling on his hair, and a voice choked with frustrated exhaustion. “Don’t come! Get right back on that fucking boat and go back to Sadrith Mora, because I cannot take you doing this all over Vivec.”  
  
“I’m not going anywhere.” Julan offloaded the second bag onto the wooden quay with a determined thud that made Iriel’s eyelid twitch.  
  
“Don’t you dare drop my fucking bag like that, all my potions are in there!” He snatched it up and began checking the contents for cracks.

“Why’d you bring so many, anyway?” Julan eyed the bag, suspicion latching onto yet another target. “You told me not to bring armour or weapons, because you claimed this was only going to be walking and talking.”  
  
“It is! But that’s bad enough - I have to interview three complete strangers! It’s extremely stressful. I feel better if I know I have certain things with me.” Ire swung his bag carefully onto his shoulder. “Do you think I’m lying about something? You think I’m secretly here to… to… what? What do you think’s the big fucking conspiracy here?”

Julan continued to glower. “I don’t know! Something’s not right. I don’t know why that drugged-up old fool has you researching this stuff, but I don’t like it.”  
  
“You’ve made that  _so incredibly_ clear.”  
  
“And you’re sure he doesn’t know about me? You haven’t…?”  
  
“Of course I fucking haven’t told him anything, what do you take me for? We need some fucking money, if we want to fund this trip to Mzuleft, and he’s paying! That’s all!”

“Yeah, but…” Julan lowered his voice and gave the departing boat captain a wary glance. “Asking about the Nerevarine is bad enough, but the Sixth House? It’s bad luck to even think about that. Why’s some Imperial nosing into it? I hope he knows what he’s doing… what am I saying, of course he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”  
  
“That’s really not my problem.”  
  
“IT IS MINE! Why else d'you think I’m here?!”

Ire spun to face him. “I  _thought_  you might want to spend time with me, but I’m certainly regretting that idea! I can’t help what I’m here to do, and if you’re going to make it harder, I’d rather you left.”  
  
“Look–”  
  
“No! I’m in no state to argue with you any more.”  
  
“I know, but–”  
  
“Be  _quiet_.” Wrapping his arms around his chest, he wheeled away, but not so fast or far that Julan was unable to follow. Ire saw him approach out of the corner of his eye, expression somewhat gentler, but still determined.  
  
“I’m sorry, OK?” Julan said. “I’m not trying to make it harder for you, and I know I’m too paranoid, but… don’t you get why this looks bad to me? My whole mission depends on secrecy, my life depends on it. This city is the festering heart of the Temple, there are Ordinators crawling everywhere, and you want us to go stirring up trouble by asking dangerous questions? On behalf of someone we know nothing about?”  
  
He pointed up at the impossibly huge, impossibly floating rock, hovering over the northern part of the city. “That’s where they put heretics like me, you know! The Ministry of Truth, they call it, but it’s a prison, a place for torture and secret execution! Nobody ever comes out! So being here isn’t easy for me either, but I can’t ignore this. I’m sorry, but it’s too important.”  
  
Iriel sighed, and massaged his forehead. “I know. I’m sorry, too. I’m extremely on edge today, for a number of reasons.”  _One of which is that you’re right to be worried about Cosades, but if I tell you that, it’ll only make things a thousand times worse.  
_  
He looked up at the sky-scraping stone curves of the Foreign Quarter canton, looming above them. “It’s more difficult for me to be back here than I expected.”  
  
“You said you lived here before?”  
  
Ire nodded. “For a couple of months. In the St Delyn slum. It… wasn’t a good time in my life.”  
  
“You never sound like you’ve  _had_  any good times in your life.”  
  
“Very funny.”  
  
Julan glanced at him sidelong as they set out towards the city. “It wasn’t a joke.”  
  
  
The face of the Ordinator guarding the bridge was hidden beneath the ubiquitous gold helm of his order, but something in the set of his shoulders still managed to broadcast disapproval. “Go on about your business,” he growled, as Iriel and Julan passed into the Foreign Quarter. “But I’m watching you.”  
  
Ire shuddered inwardly, the familiar sick shifting of his stomach that he always got around guards. He looked to his friend, seeking the reassurance of the eyeroll and sarcastic smirk that was his usual reaction to local law enforcement. Julan, though, looked nearly as uncomfortable as Ire himself.  
  
“We haven’t even started asking questions,” Ire said. “There’s no way they could suspect anything.”  
  
“It’s not that.”  
“What, then?”  
“Forget it, it’s stupid.”  
  
Ire regarded him for a moment, chewing his lip. “All right.”  
  
  
The Quarter was teeming with people, and to make matters worse, there was some kind of street market in full swing. Ire tried to concentrate on choosing a destination, before sensory overload kicked in. Edging between a baked ash yam stall and a Khajiiti fortune teller’s tasselled canopy, he consulted his instructions.  
  
“Our location for the Argonian, Huleeya, is here in the Foreign Quarter. But it’s inside the canton, in a tavern. And I,” he continued quickly, before Julan could say anything, “am not capable of handling a fucking tavern right now. So we either head for the Temple or St Olms.”

Julan’s experience of Vivec City was limited to their brief dash from the Mages’ Guild to the docks on Old Life. Seeing it in daylight, he was staring at its structures and inhabitants in barely concealed amazement. When Ire asked him what he thought, however, he only shrugged non-committally and muttered something to the effect that stolen godhood obviously didn’t come complete with architectural expertise.  
  
“Anything but the blighted Temple,” he said, now. “What’s St Olms?”  
  
“Another slum. We’ll need to go through Redoran canton, then… either through the Arena, or St Delyn.”  
  
“The Arena? If you’d rather avoid St Delyn.”  
  
They edged their way through the crowd. A cluster of teenage Dunmeri girls browsing a stall full of painted pottery suddenly erupted into shared giggles as they passed. Iriel invariably assumed any laughter in the vicinity was malevolently directed at him, but seeing Julan flinch at it was unusual.

The Redoran canton was busy too, with numerous men in bonemould and even the odd piece of ebony armour hanging out along the walkways, exchanging laconic remarks.  
  
“Look,” Julan said to him, “if you need to go invisible or anything, it’s fine, I get it.”  
  
Iriel shook his head. “Thanks, but… I can manage.”  
  
“I just thought, what with all the warriors…”  
  
“I don’t think they’re going to bother me.” Ire had a sixth sense for such things, and it wasn’t going off. The Redoran men were relaxed, conversing quietly, hands resting on the hilts of their weapons more as a nonchalant pose than through any immediate interest in using them. They struck Iriel as men with nothing to prove, and indeed, he reached the eastern side of the canton receiving no more than a few casual glances. Julan skulked through the Redoran ranks scowling, shifting his left arm as if he wished his shield were still on it.  
  
On a quieter street now, Iriel took the opportunity to face Julan. “All right. What’s wrong? There’s no way any of these people suspect you’re a heretic. You’re not in armour, so your clothing stands out more than usual, but I thought you liked it when people notice that you’re Ashlander.”

Julan fingered the cuff of his shirt. It had small green iridescent shell beads sewn into the brown fabric in a repeating pattern. Ire kept finding them on the floor, at home, and saving them to return to Julan, who would then spend the evening locating the gaps and carefully sewing them back on again. “I do,” he said. “It’s not about that.”  
  
“Then what is it,” demanded Ire, “because you’re behaving like… like me! And behaving like me means there must be something wrong with you.”  
  
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” muttered Julan, walking further along the empty street, while Iriel scurried alongside, frowning.  
  
“I’m right, though,” insisted Ire. “What’s the matter?”  
  
Julan sighed. “Stop trying to make me tell you things you’re only going to get upset about.”  
  
Iriel stopped dead in his tracks, blinking. After a few seconds, he ran to catch up, yanking on Julan’s arm. “Right,” he hissed. “You don’t have a choice now. Now you fucking  _have_  to tell me, because nothing you say could possibly be worse than all the terrible things I will imagine you’re thinking.”

“Sheogorath, Ire…” Julan gave him a despairing look. “I can’t win, with you. You’re going to get mad no matter what I do, but I told you, it’s stupid.”  
  
“All right, it’s stupid. Understood, duly noted down in the record: Julan’s thoughts - stupid. Now fucking tell me anyway.”  
  
“…It feels weird. This. Walking around with you.”  
  
“But–”  
  
“I know! That’s why it’s stupid! But still… it’s different now. And I feel like people can tell. That we’re… you know.”  
  
“No!” Ire felt himself babbling in sudden, desperate confusion, but couldn’t stop. “I… actually, I… I really… I  _don’t_ … so… what are we? That you apparently know, and I…”

“Uh…” Julan ran a hand through his hair, which was going through a phase of constantly getting in his eyes, not quite long enough to tie back. “Not lovers, I guess… technically… but, uh…”  
  
Ire didn’t move a muscle, except to say, “What?”  
  
Julan looked panicked. “Well… Boy… friends?” He released his held breath when Iriel broke into a grin. “Did I say the right thing? Because I have no idea how this works, or how I’m supposed to act, or how other people are going to react, or… or anything.”  
  
“What makes you think you have to act differently, all of a sudden?”  
  
“Because I don’t know what you expect from me! Especially in public. You hate it when people notice you for any reason, so I assume that means you’d rather I not draw attention to us, pretend we’re just friends, but now I’m conscious of everything I do, and I don’t know how to… I keep thinking I’m going to give the game away, somehow!”  
  
Iriel tried to hide his smirk behind a fist pressed swiftly to his mouth, but his eyes betrayed him.  _You shouldn’t be enjoying this so much,_ he told himself sternly. _You might find it amusing, but while this is old territory for you, it’s still uncharted country for him, and it’s probably making him regret ever crossing this particular frontier. And I can’t even help, because I don’t know what I want, either. I don’t want to make him like me, hiding himself in shadows. But I don’t want trouble; I want us to be safe.  
  
_ “You don’t need to worry,” he said. “No one will ever suspect a thing about you. It’s all about upholding sufficiently masculine behaviour, and you know how to do that. I never did, even as a child. For all I know, it’s got nothing to do with sexuality. My boyfriends were always able to pass for straight, it was only ever me who was _obvious_ , tainting them by association. Sometimes I hate what that implies about my taste in men. Anyway, you already had this problem when we were nothing but friends, remember your black eye? But whether people wanted to hide me, like Hiranel, or to show me off, like Reuben, others have always assumed–” His lips slowly stopped moving, and the muscles of his face collapsed, one by one, into slackness.  
  
“Ire? Are you OK?”  
  
Iriel was staring blankly. He shook his head. “Oh no. Oh  _gods_ …”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I just thought of something horrible!” wailed Iriel. “What if… what if Reu wanted me for that  _pullimer_ thing, because he thought having an elven boyfriend gave him some kind of status in Imperial society! What if that’s why he was so upset I wanted to conceal him! He wanted to be  _seen_  with me, as a dominant Imperial male thing, oh gods, that’d be so like him, oh  _fuck!_ ”  
  
“What difference does it make, now?”  
  
“I’ve changed my mind! I want to take him up on that invitation to hit him! Can I borrow a weapon? I need to be sure he won’t enjoy it.”

Julan rubbed his brow with the heel of his hand. “Ire… tempting as the idea is, we’re not hunting down your worthless ex just so you can hit him.”  
  
“Why the fuck not?”  
  
“Because… uh… well… Look, for a start, it’d take too long. We don’t know where he is.”

“Ugh. I suppose you’re right, but…” Ire snorted his breath out through his nose, trying to exhale the rage with it, but he still felt murderous.  
  
“I don’t get it.” Julan was bemused. “You’re acting like this is worse than the fact he used you to steal from the university.”  
  
“It is!”  
  
“How in Oblivion can you say that?”  
  
“Because… I understand Reu wanting money. It meant freedom, for him. I may not like it, but… it always made perfect sense that given the choice between me and enough money to start a new life, he’d pick the money. Of course he would, it’d make him far happier than I ever could. Using me for money is understandable. Logical, even. But using me to uphold ridiculous Imperial fuckery about elves? That’s just offensive.”  
  
“I don’t know how you can say he made a logical choice, when he ended up right back in jail. Some new life that was.”  
  
“I should never have let him out, the viperous shitbiscuit!”  
  
“But you did, because you’re a compassionate person.”  
  
“Like fuck I am.”  
  
“And Reu was an idiot, because I don’t understand choosing any amount of money over you.”  
  
“That’s because you’re an Ashlander, and you think money is filthy decadence.”  
  
“I think you’re impossible to compliment, and I should give up trying!”  
  
“Noooo, don’t do that.” He surreptitiously brushed his hand against Julan’s. Then he squinted up at the canton ahead of them, chewing the inside of his lip. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said at last. “Let’s walk through St Delyn. There’s someone I might drop in on while I’m here.”


	83. deserve

The one-room hovel was empty, and had been for some time. Flies buzzed across dishes grown high and rancid with mould, and Iriel’s finger left a wake in the dust when he ran it along the table.  
  
“Ugh!” Julan, investigating the bed, pulled his hand away in disgust. “The whole thing’s damp and rotten. I can see black fungus growing on the pillow, and it smells like dead rat.” He squinted at the blanket in the gloom. “…Oh. There’s a reason for that. Several, in fact. Malacath’s teeth, this is grim.”

“Dro'Zaymar always kept this place spotless,” said Ire mournfully. “He must have moved away.”  
  
“Possibly.” Julan was eyeing a series of large, dark patches on the floor. “Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s in a better place. If only because nowhere could be worse than this.”  
  
“This place was heaven, compared to my room,” Ire said. “I used to come here to escape from it. Dro'Zaymar could afford to keep a fire lit, for one thing. That’s the only way to fend off the damp, and prevent everything mouldering.”  
  
Julan’s lip curled, staring at the bed. “You mean you slept in something like that? How could you stand it?”  
  
Iriel shrugged. “If I began to care, I took more moon sugar.”  
  
A few rooms down, a fight broke out. Shouts and screams echoed dimly through the thin walls, and elsewhere, a baby’s whimper rose to a mewl. Julan hovered uneasily near the door, trying not to touch anything. “Are we done?”  
  
Ire nodded, resigned to failure. “I wish I could have seen Dro'Zaymar again. I wanted to thank him for being the first person I encountered in Morrowind who was simply, unselfishly, kind to me. He had no reason to be, and I did nothing but disappoint him, but he was.”  
  
_Even after I propositioned him in such an incredibly embarrassing way that I almost couldn’t bear to come back here, but my New Life resolution should be to get the fuck over myself._  
  
“I was also hoping he might know the Khajiiti informant in St Olms, but I suppose we’ll have to ask around for ourselves.”  _Addhiranirr, why is that name familiar to me? Ugh, fucking skooma-brain._  
  
  
They stepped out into the marginally fresher air of St Delyn canton, picking their way over mounds of refuse that almost blocked the narrow walkway. A half-clothed toddler was rooting through it, no adult in sight.  
  
Julan paused, regarding it with a worried expression. Iriel tried to pull him onward, but he resisted. “Is that kid all right?”  
  
Ire shrugged miserably as the child pulled a lump of bread out of the midden, and peered at it.  
  
Julan winced. “Should we do something?”

“What can we do?” Iriel’s voice was dull, toneless. “Call the Ordinators? The Temple? Do you really think they’d improve that child’s life, with their involvement?” He rubbed a hand across his face. “There’s probably a parent somewhere nearby, too drunk or high to know what’s going on.”  
  
“There must be something we can do to help.” Ire watched Julan approach the child and kneel down next to it, exchanging a few words. Taking out his coin-purse, Julan weighed it, hesitating, then hung the whole thing around the child’s slender neck, hiding it beneath its vest. “Give it to her when she wakes up,” Ire heard him say, firmly.  
  
Standing up, he answered Iriel’s sceptical expression with a defensive one. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Yes, there are probably a thousand kids like that here, no, I can’t help all of them. Yes, we’re supposed to be here to earn money ourselves, yes, even if the kid doesn’t lose it, it’ll probably all go on booze or drugs.”  
  
Ire looked away. “I didn’t say anything.”  
  
“You were thinking it, though.”  
  
“True, but I’d have preferred that you not force me to say so, exposing the yawning void where my compassion ought to be. Thanks, I feel like complete shit, now.”  
  
“I don’t think you lack compassion.” Julan was giving him a look that Iriel had started mentally referring to as his  _oh Iriel, please stop spilling self-loathing everywhere and making me clean up after you_  look. Then it vanished, replaced by something more inward-looking, conflicted.  
  
“If it helps,” Julan said, “it wasn’t compassion made me do it, so much as… I don’t know. I spent a lot of time on my own as a kid too, when mother was meditating, or in a sacred trance. If I helped because I was reminded of myself, isn’t that a weird kind of selfishness?”  
  
“No, that’s still compassion.”  _And if your mother was in a fucking sacred trance, I’m the Black Queen of Firsthold._  
  
“But… if I only did it to stop myself feeling bad, that’s selfishness. Maybe I knew it wouldn’t help, but I did it to feel better. That’s not compassion, that’s stupidity. See, you… you’re smart enough to know when you can’t help, and you’re so used to feeling bad about yourself, you don’t see the point of doing stupid things to make yourself feel better. But I can’t help it. I can’t do nothing. So I do  _something_ , and tell myself it might help.” He sighed, and gestured uselessly. “There was barely any money in there anyway.”  
  
Iriel didn’t reply. He was trying to work out whether he was offended by the “you’re so used to feeling bad about yourself” bit, but he never came to a solid conclusion, and eventually, the moment passed.  
  
  
“I don’t know how anyone can live in this place,” Julan muttered, when the edge of the canton was in sight. “I don’t know how you could! People here are barely scraping through their lives, too hopeless and exhausted to even care about each other. I’m glad you had that Khajiit looking out for you, but… Azura’s star, I had no idea it was this bad. I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Sorry for what?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I knew things hadn’t been easy for you, but I didn’t realise how bad it must’ve been, until I saw this place.”  
  
“You really don’t have to fake pity for me,” Iriel said, discomfort tightening his jaw. “I’ve seen where you grew up, remember? A ragged tent in the middle of nowhere! You get overawed by solid roofs and hot water, and the few things you own are constantly on the point of falling apart!”

Julan raised an eyebrow. “So I’m not allowed to feel bad for you? Because I didn’t have enough clean socks, growing up? Or d'you mean because I’m an Ashlander, so me being sorry for you is the wrong way round? I’m such a symbol for poverty and hardship, it offends you to be pitied by me?”  
  
He waved off Iriel’s attempts to interrupt. “You didn’t mean it like that, I know. But, look… Mother and I had it rough because we were outcasts, but any real Velothi camp was a better place to live than this slum. People at least took care of each other, looked after everyone.”  
  
“Really? Because last time I visited the Ahemmusa, they were trying to strangle one another over a silly argument about guar. Also, they didn’t look after you, did they? They literally  _cast you out_.”  
  
Julan’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, well… I didn’t say they were perfect. People are people, right? But that goes for you, as well. You’ve been through some terrible things. Who cares if they were worse than mine or not, they were still bad. And whatever you say, I’m sorry they happened to you. You didn’t deserve pain and suffering.”  
  
Ire hunched his shoulders, and kept walking. “Nobody ever does,” he said, vaguely.  
  
“I thought an hour ago you wanted to give Reu pain and suffering because he deserved it!”

“No,” Ire exhaled. “Not any more, not really. Reu’s had enough pain and suffering in his life, and I expect he’s already found more. He doesn’t need my help, even if I really wanted to hurt him. And I don’t.”  
  
“See,” Julan said darkly, “that’s why you’re a more compassionate person than I am.” As Iriel made incredulous noises, he continued. “I wouldn’t have let Reu out, if he had betrayed me that way. I could never forgive something like that. He deserved to die. Some people do. The problem is that there’s no justice to it.”  
  
Iriel didn’t reply, not quite trusting his thoughts to survive public scrutiny, though they continued to spiral through his brain.  
  
_What does that even mean, justice? I suppose if someone hurts you, you want them to feel it, you want them to understand the suffering they caused you. But Reu did the things he did because he already had a miserable life that he hated. What more could he learn, from pain? In the case of my ma, I could claim that for my revenge, I wanted her to be utterly isolated, rejected and cut off from her entire family. Except she already was, that happened to her long before I was born, when she married my pa. And look how that turned out. It didn’t make her compassionate, it was what made her so determined to force me into the shape she wanted._  
  
He glanced over at Julan, marching next to him, brows knitted.  _It’s sweet that your hardships made you want to help others, but… most people only pass on pain, don’t they? I know I do. It’s why I’m such a nightmare to be around, on my bad days. And I’m no beacon of peace and forgiveness. I’m as cruel and vindictive as anyone, in my heart. I fantasise about all sorts of things, but in the end, I don’t think causing more pain would do anything but cause more pain. I don’t believe there’s any real justice in the world, and I’m certainly in no position to provide it._  
  
_All kindness is undeserved, that’s what makes it kindness. But if nobody deserves kindness or suffering… why not choose kindness? I’m sick of always counting the cost, doubting the outcome. Dro'Zaymar never saw a good outcome from his kindness to me. That’s why I wanted to see him, to tell him… that I always valued his intentions, even when I couldn’t live up to them. So… perhaps you’re right. Right to help that child, whatever the reason or the result, because perhaps they’ll remember that you did. Or the mother will, or… fuck, even if it’s just me. I’ll remember. But… even as you’re changing me, I’m changing you for the worse, infecting you with my cynicism, making you doubt yourself. Ugh, I knew this would be nothing but an unfair exchange. Good thing you’re the one who believes in fairness and justice, and people getting what they deserve, and not me._  
  
As they left the canton, he looked back over the bridge, one last time.


	84. trust

“Say. That. Again.” Julan’s eyes were locked on the Dunmer with the face like a wolf eating a lemon, and his hand hovered over the chitin dagger at his belt.   
  
“Ash-eating guarfucker,” obliged the man, the unpleasant laughter from behind Iriel indicating he had at least two friends in on the joke.  
  
To Ire’s left, a sweating bartender began clearing breakable objects from the top of the bar. “Take it outside, lads?” he quavered, without much hope.

Ire looked desperately at the Argonian they had come to interview, but while Huleeya was an assassin, his profession wasn’t to be the advantage Ire had hoped. “I am a Thrall of the Morag Tong,” Huleeya murmured. “Murder is permitted under sacred Writ alone. To kill these troublesome fools would tarnish my honour.”  
  
 _Fuck your honour,_  thought Iriel, curling twitching fingers into damp palms.  _Your honour won’t prevent these Camonna Tong shitstains from tarnishing our faces with their fists._  
  
They’d had no luck finding the Khajiiti informant in St Olms, despite walking the canton all afternoon. Eventually, Iriel had agreed to head back to the Foreign Quarter, swayed by Julan’s argument that the market would be over now, and whether or not the Black Shalk Cornerclub still had an Argonian assassin in it, it would at least have food and drink.  
  
It turned out to have all these things and more, “more”, in this case, being a trio of belligerent and racist Dunmer. They were offering Huleeya trouble, and were only too happy to share it with an Ashlander and an Altmer.  
  
Iriel put a warning hand on Julan’s arm. Until now, the other elf had been keeping his anger just beneath the surface, jagged and treacherous as submerged rocks at sea. Ire prayed Julan had the good sense to keep it that way, to let their aggressors change tack and depart, or else run themselves aground on their own stupidity. Self-defence was legal, assault was not.  
  
“Heeeeeeey,” crowed a nasal voice from behind him. “I remember this fuckin’ n'wah! Savil, it’s that pansy-ass golden trash we used to see at the No Name Club! Off his pretty Altmer tits on moon sugar, beggin’ ol’ Brathus for more all the time!”  
  
Laughter echoed around him, but Iriel’s mind was ice and needles, too focused on getting out of this alive to have time for shame. He locked eyes with Huleeya. “We need to go. Now.”  
  
The Argonian, lithe and yellow-specked, with a backward curving cranial crest, flicked his tongue across his lips. “I have been attempting to leave for more than an hour,” he said. “They wish to bait me into a fight. I refuse to engage them, but neither can I allow them to follow me, and bring trouble to the friend with whom I am staying.”  
  
“What?” A mock-offended gasp. One of the men behind Iriel moved into view from the right, approaching Huleeya. “The filthy lizard doesn’t want to play with us any more? But we were having such a nice time!”  
  
Julan took a step forward to intercept the man, his arm pulling free from Ire’s fingers.  _Don’t do anything stupid, please don’t do anything stupid._ The Dunmer grinned, and swerved away carelessly, as if he had intended to do that all along.  
  
“We’re only looking out for him, you know,” said the wolfish man in front of them. “A masterless beast is a danger to himself and others.”  
  
“D'ya mean the lizard or the ash-eater? I can’t tell,” sniggered the nasal Dunmer behind Iriel.  
  
Julan turned towards him, slowly and deliberately pulling his dagger from its sheath. “Want to find out how dangerous I am, do you, f'lah?” he said, evenly. His voice was more controlled than Ire expected, but that was far from enough to halt the panic clawing at his throat. _Shut up! Put that fucking thing away, you’re going to get us all killed! I wish Tilde were here, she always knew how to defuse these situations. Gods, I’m going to have to do something, aren’t I?_  
 _  
_Iriel forced air into his lungs, and tried, unsuccessfully, to simulate confidence. “How much would it take to get you to leave us alone?”  
  
The wolfish Dunmer raised his eyebrows. “You think this is about gold, do you, scum? You think we can be bought? You are quite mistaken. This is about pride. This is about taking a stand against the tide of n'wah filth sweeping across Morrowind, from degenerate Altmer swine to vicious animals walking free.”  
  
“You’re right, he  _is_ walking free,” Julan interrupted, holding the dagger at hip-level, almost casual, not quite aimed at anyone. “He’s walking out of here. Go on,” he nodded to Huleeya. “We’ll make sure you’re not followed.”  
 _  
How?!_  wondered Ire, as Julan turned his attention to the man between Huleeya and the door and began staring him down. The man, small, wiry, and apparently unarmed, rolled his eyes, and sneered something about “blighted savages”. Still, he shrugged aside and let the Argonian pass. Ire saw Huleeya whisper something to Julan as he opened the door, but quickly transferred his attention back to the other two Camonna Tong.  
  
When he turned, they were much closer than before, and grinning. “Don’t touch me!” he gasped. “Touch me and it’s assault, you can’t–”  
  
The wolfish man extended a finger, and flicked Ire’s nose. The sting of it sent two decades’ worth of trauma vibrating through him. “Oh, I’m so sorry, is that  _assault?_ ” the Dunmer crooned, wide-eyed. Ire couldn’t move. Another finger jabbed into his ribs from the right. “How about now?” demanded the second man, the one with the mud-coloured braids that hung like dead rats’ tails in front of each ear.  
  
 _Don’t react,_ he told himself desperately, as the urge to scream and explode people into flames welled up.  _They can’t really do anything to hurt you. Hold out a little longer. Give Huleeya time to get away.  
_  
“Hey!”Julan was behind him. “Leave him alone.”  _Fuck, no, don’t make this worse, don’t–_  A hand closed around his arm, and he almost lost himself completely to flames and panic, but it was Julan, pulling him towards the door. “Get outside,” he hissed into his ear. “It’ll be fine, I’m covering you.”  
  
“I’m not leaving you here!”  
  
“I’ll be right behind you,” Julan whispered. “As soon as we get through the door, I’ll slam it shut and hold it, and you cast a lock spell so they can’t follow us. OK?”   
  
He was trying to sound confident, but Ire could hear adrenaline shaking the words through his clenched teeth, and smell the sharpness of his sweat. “You can’t watch all of them at once,” Ire told him.  
  
“Sure I can. Trust me.”  
  
Ire didn’t have time to debate it. He nodded, and tore his eyes away from the Camonna Tong, who were circling around, moving closer. He tried to focus on the doorway, and getting through it.  
  
He heard jeers and sounds of spitting, but kept walking forwards.  
  
A scraping sound to his left. Movement on the edge of vision. He kept walking.  
  
“Where d'ya think you’re going, n'wah? You haven’t even had a  _drink_.”  
  
An outraged howl from Julan made him spin around. Ire had a brief image of the wiry Camonna Tong Dunmer hefting something in his hand, before Julan barrelled into the man, knocking him to the ground. Then everyone was shouting, and the other two Camonna Tong drew long knives from their belts. The bartender ducked behind the bar, shrieking for the guards. Beneath Julan, the man on the floor made unhealthy noises, and a lurid flash of bright, arterial blood sprayed across the wall _.  
  
_ Ire’s scream caught in his throat, then he sent it crackling down his arms into the wolfish man. White light arced across the space between them, discharging into his body. The Dunmer fell twitching and jerking to the floor. Through a kaleidoscope of after-images, Ire saw the braided man leap forwards, stab Julan in the thigh, and get elbowed in the face for his trouble.  
  
“Push him clear!” Ire yelled, preparing another shock spell. Julan twisted, and with a brutal shove, sent his dazed assailant staggering backwards. Ire’s fingers lit him up, and the braided man dropped, convulsing, alongside his comrade.  
  
“Fuck!” Ire found his voice, cracked and hollow, in the brief silence before the bartender started shouting for the Ordinators again. “What the fuck just happened?” He grabbed Julan’s shoulder, trying to pull him upright. “We have to get out of here!”  
  
Julan stared at him, wild-eyed, blood drenching the front of his body, his hands still holding down the wiry Dunmer. The man was quite definitely dead, Julan’s dagger buried in his throat. The empty bottle he had been holding rolled from his limp fingers and along the floor.  
  
“You killed him! You  _idiot_ , what were you thinking?” Ire fell to his knees next to Julan, beginning to tremble as the rush of combat and magical expenditure wore off, although he knew the danger was far from past.  
  
“He… he was going to throw something at you,” Julan stammered. “I thought…”  
  
“But he hadn’t thrown it yet!” Ire squeaked. “So this is murder, you murdered him!”  
  
“I… didn’t mean… my dagger just…” Julan’s voice wavered unsteadily, staring at the dead man. He removed his blade, and wiped it distractedly on his bloody shirt, which didn’t help much. Then he paused, sucked in a long breath, and when he turned back to Iriel, his eyes were hard, defiant. “Yes, I killed him! So what? Was I supposed to let him throw a bottle at your head?”  
  
“This is not the time for this!” Iriel hauled him upright. “Come on, before the guards arrive!”  
  
Julan pointed to the other men on the floor. “What about them? Are they dead?”   
  
“I hope not,” said Ire, refusing to look at them, “but we don’t have time to check their fucking pulses!”  
  
Julan’s eyes darted over to the dead man, and back. “I should slit their throats, too. It’d be safer.”  
  
“NO, YOU SHOULD BLOODY WELL NOT! Come on! Ugh, your leg. How bad is it?”  
  
“I don’t know, the pain hasn’t hit yet. Look - Huleeya said to meet him at Jobasha’s bookstore, d'you know where that is?”  
  
Ire pushed anxious fingers into his hair, trying to focus. “Not far. We might even make it, if I can cast enough invisibility for two… and if we can stop the blood leaving a trail.”  
  
  
The door was hung with a small, beautifully hand-lettered sign. It was just legible in the dim light of the single lamp mounted over the entrance to the bookstore, which was at the far end of a narrow alleyway, easily missed among the canton’s many passages.  
  
 _It is with great sadness that Jobasha informs his honoured customers that his humble shop cannot serve them at this time. Until the blessed tenth hour comes, may you walk on warm sands._  A tiny stylised drawing of a bird ended the message.  
  
Ire knocked as loudly as he dared, other arm supporting Julan, who, increasingly pale and clammy, was pressing Iriel’s spare shirt into the gash on the back of his right thigh. When no one came, Ire knocked again, with heightened desperation.  
  
“What you said before,” he told Julan, as they waited, hearts pounding. “The answer is yes. Yes, you  _were_ supposed to let him throw the bottle at my head! Because then anything we did would have been self defence!”  
  
“You’d have been hurt.” Julan said through gritted teeth. “You hate that.”  
  
“Yes, but…” Ire thought about the last time he’d been hit on the head, the memories that invoked. “It still… it would have been the sensible thing.” His voice began to shake, adrenaline utterly spent, tears spilling. “Thank you… for not doing it…” He buried his face in Julan’s shoulder.  
  
They clung together, leaning against the wall, each trying to stop the other from falling over, neither sure which of them was more likely to.  
  
There came a soft scraping of bolts, and then the door opened. 


	85. protected

“So very kind of the Ordinators to worry about poor Jobasha. Some of his books are so valuable, and many bad people wish to steal them. This one here, with the gold leaf on the binding? So very rare. Jobasha is so happy to know that the Ordinators are protecting him.”  
  
“Oblivion take your books! Tell us everything you know about the bloodbath at the Black Shalk! The Argonian has been seen here on multiple occasions. What about the others, the Ashlander and the Altmer?”  
  
“Indeed, many, many people are kind enough to patronise Jobasha’s humble bookstore, he is so flattered by it. But he is so sorry, muthseras. Jobasha knows nothing of this trouble. He spent all evening reading a book of exquisitely beautiful poems by Rishaara-daro of Corinthe that made him purr so loudly he was quite unable to hear anything else.”

Iriel crouched with Julan and Huleeya in a small cellar beneath a cunningly-hidden trapdoor, while Jobasha entertained the Ordinators. Unless the Ordinators were entertaining Jobasha, it was hard to tell. The small, round Khajiiti man was performing a bumbling, absent-minded routine that had them tearing their hair - or would, were it not protected by the crested golden helmets they wore.  
  
This version of Jobasha was at odds with the quiet, thoughtful man that Iriel remembered from his previous encounters, many months ago. Ire had spent long afternoons browsing the shelves, flicking sadly through books he couldn’t afford to buy, but couldn’t bring himself to shoplift.  
  
Well. Not quite true. On his first visit, Jobasha had materialised at his elbow as he attempted to leave. Gazing into Iriel’s eyes with an expression of deepest regret, the Khajiit had murmured that the noble Altmer had, completely accidentally, forgotten about the copy of  _The Arcturian Heresy_  he had placed in his bag, no doubt purely for safekeeping.  
  
Ire had apologised profusely in a babbling, borderline hysterical monologue, and paid for the book with money that would otherwise have fed him for the rest of the week. He had been scrupulously and guiltily honest after that, although after a while, he began to suspect that his repeated encounters with certain volumes were being deliberately orchestrated. Namely, the moon sugar addiction self-help bookshe kept finding hidden amongst the magical theory texts on his preferred shelves.  
  
In the claustrophobic darkness, Ire struggled to maintain an invisibility spell over the three of them, trying to remain silent, every moment dreading that the trapdoor was about to open. Huleeya was keeping pressure on Julan’s thigh wound as best he could. Julan himself lay on his back, his breathing shallow and barely audible. _  
  
Fuck, I hope the bleeding is under control._ _I should cast Silence, then we could try a healing spell without being heard. But it’s highly unlikely I’d even succeed, and Julan’s beyond casting anything, now. More importantly, without sound, we have no warning if they start coming down here. Gods, I hope I’m making the right choice.  
  
_ The Ordinators had banged on the door mere moments after their arrival at the bookstore. Julan, paler than ash, had half-fallen down the ladder, the cloth against his wound soaked through with blood. There were healing potions in Ire’s bag, but he’d left it upstairs in their frantic hurry to hide. Down in the cellar, the smell of blood was overpowering. He prayed it didn’t carry too far.  
  
 _Surely an illusion spell could mask odours, the way Silence masks sound? The principle can’t be too different. It’d only be a matter of isolating and modulating the– fuckfuckfuck, concentrate, Ire, don’t lose the spell._  
  
Footsteps above, and a Dunmer voice, metallically muffled. “There’s no one else here, commander.”  
  
“N'chow! Go question the High Fane priestess on duty - respectfully, you hear me? - and see if anyone teleported in. I’m off to patrol the canton again. I’m wasting my breath on this flea-bitten s'wit.” More footsteps, becoming quieter.  
  
They waited out many long minutes in oppressive, nerve-shredding silence. Finally, the trapdoor opened, and Jobasha’s long-whiskered silhouette nodded to them.  
  
  
The back rooms of the store had even more books than the front, albeit organised more haphazardly, piled onto any available surface. Small yellow lanterns, securely enclosed to avoid open flames, sat atop stacks of strange and beautiful volumes that Iriel had certainly never seen in the shop. He was drawn to them inexorably, and once he was less concerned about Julan, he allowed himself to investigate more closely.  
  
Julan’s knife-wound had been closed, but the bloodloss had no remedy other than time. He was currently leaning on a pile of cushions, ravenously eating anything and everything Jobasha had to hand. Seeing Iriel glance at him, he offered him a plate of small sticky fruit. “They’re very sweet,” he said, indistinctly, “but otherwise not bad.”  
  
Iriel had noticed that many Dunmer disliked sugary foods, which were not part of traditional Morrowind cuisine. The locals struck Ire as positively suspicious of sweetness, as if it were an unearned pleasure, untrustworthy in its lack of honest bitterness. Julan apparently considered anything sweeter than an ash yam tantamount to decadence. Ire had always been a sugartooth of one kind or another, but he didn’t want to risk making the books sticky, and so shook his head.  
  
Many volumes were written in what Iriel supposed must be Ta'agra, some with beautiful tooled covers and painted inlays. He opened another to find pages of dense calligraphy, each page ended with a tiny, intricately inked flower.  
  
“That is the scribe’s signature,” Jobasha said, appearing quietly beside him. “The more complex it is, the more respected the scribe. This raffalia blossom here is the mark of Dro'Sinna-jo, the famous historian. Although some argue the text is a forgery, and that this writing cannot have come from the claw of Dro'Sinna-jo, because the downstrokes on the characters indicate a scribe with greater curvature than can be found in genuine Dro'Sinna-jo onyxography.”  
  
“Khajiiti scribes write with their claws?”  
  
“Why use a worse tool, when a better one is present? The care and shaping of a scribe’s claws is one of the traditional skills of the profession. Ink-stained claws are such a mark of respect in Elsweyr, that there are some who dip their fingers purely to affect wisdom and learning.” He laughed, a soft, vibrating rumble, deep in his throat. “Thus the Khajiiti insult, ‘claw-dipper’ - one who simulates knowledge or skill he does not possess; a pretender.”  
  
Iriel turned the pages reverentially. “Beautiful. It’s a history?”  
  
“Yes, of the early First Era, before Elsweyr was one land, and was still a litter of tiny nation states.”  
  
“And do you also believe it to be a forgery?”  
  
Jobasha smiled. “It is what it is. Beautiful.” He gently took the book from Ire’s hands, and replaced it on the pile. “This is Jobasha’s personal library. Too precious to sell. He wishes he could display them in the shop to share their beauty with others, but alas, they would not be safe.”  
  
Ire blushed like a sunset, and turned away, slumping down to sit next to Julan. “Pass me that fucking fruit,” he muttered. “I don’t deserve to touch these books anyway.”  
  
Julan had eaten his way through an entire tin of saltrice crackers, oblivious to all Iriel’s judgemental stares. His horror at imposing on a stranger, especially one who had every right to hate him, was rising to critical levels. “I’m sorry to bring all this trouble to you, Jobasha,” he said, guilt creasing his brow. “You’ve helped us enough, we’ll leave as soon as my friend can walk.”  
  
The Khajiit made dismissive, tutting noises. “Any friend of Huleeya is a friend of Jobasha. And it is no very unusual thing, trouble. Perhaps Iriel saw the twin lamps mounted outside Jobasha’s door?”  
  
Ire blinked in mystification. “I only saw one lamp outside.” he said.  
  
Jobasha smiled, and continued smoothly. “Of course. Jobasha’s mistake.”  
  
Ire felt he’d failed a test of some kind, but his host had already turned back to the small kitchen area, and was pouring hot water into a teapot, producing clouds of spicy, fragrant steam.  
  
When Jobasha, with a respectful nod, offered him a small ceramic cup from a tray, Iriel could bear it no longer. “You don’t have to do this!” he burst out. “I’m one of the bad people who tried to steal from you. Don’t you care?”  
  
Jobasha almost chuckled. “Iriel is not one of the bad people Jobasha spoke of to the Ordinators. Iriel took a very cheap book from a shelf that contained many expensive ones. This told Jobasha that he wanted the book for itself, not the money.” He shrugged, tilting his head. “Jobasha sadly cannot allow it, for he must eat. But Jobasha bears Iriel no ill will, for he knows what it is to want a book he cannot afford.”

“But I didn’t need it to survive,” Ire said, staring down at his hands. “It was pure selfishness.”  
  
“Then why did Iriel want it?”  
  
“Because he… I… had to believe I was still a scholar, somehow, despite my situation. That I wasn’t completely lost to everything I cared about, that I was more than a shambling brainless amalgamation of sugar and despair.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “Perhaps I  _did_  need it to survive, after all. Which still doesn’t make it right, but… Thank you for not calling the guard on me.” He met Jobasha’s eye, and although his expression remained anguished, he took the proffered cup.  
  
“Tshrrrr… Jobasha is not one to be calling the Ordinators lightly. He sees enough of them as it is. Every day, they come to Jobasha’s store, to watch over him. Are they to protect Jobasha, or to protect others from Jobasha? Either way, Jobasha is grateful they worry about him so much. But he thinks that perhaps Julan and Iriel should leave early in the morning, before they arrive. If they can enter the underworks, they will find a clothing store, and… perhaps more, if they are fortunate.”  
  
Jobasha smoothed his left eyebrow with his right fore-claw, and this time, Iriel understood the reference. Julan grinned, and, while Ire was still trying to remember which hand you used, made the counter-sign.  
  
The Khajiit nodded. “Jobasha is not in the guild himself, you understand. But he has friends, and certain arrangements. In the canalworks there is another bookstore, where some helpful people may be able to relieve Julan and Iriel of their legal difficulties. Until then, they are Jobasha’s honoured guests.”  
  



	86. change

Jobasha was going through a chest of drawers. “Jobasha is smaller, but this was always too large on him, so he thinks it will serve.” He handed Julan a loose tunic in a mauveish paisley. Julan’s shirt, too blood-soaked to save, was already on the grate of the stove, along with his pants and another shirt of Iriel’s that he’d used to staunch the bleeding. He was currently wearing Iriel’s spare pants, which, having been too short for Ire to begin with, were not a bad fit. This only added to Iriel’s irritation about the entire arrangement.

“What the fuck DID you pack, then?” he demanded. “You knew we were likely to be here for multiple days, and you had the nerve to tell  _me_ I brought too many things!”  
  
“I don’t have that many clothes to begin with,” said Julan, trying to sound reasonable. “And you said my other shirt smelt like an ogrim’s sweaty–”  
  
“All right, fine,” snapped Iriel, “never mind. But we’re finding a clothes shop first thing tomorrow - oh  _wait_ , we can’t. We’re both wanted criminals. Because you couldn’t keep your fucking dagger in your pants, and murdered somebody!”  
  
“Oh for–” Julan gave up on sounding reasonable. “It wouldn’t have made any difference, even if I had let that piece of shit hit you before I took him out! They’d still have blamed me, and you could have been killed. The blighted Ordinators would have arrested the Ashlander, no matter what we said! After everything that’s happened to you, you can’t seriously still believe the system is fair, even if you play by their rules. To Oblivion with that! I’m trying to survive.”  
  
Ire rolled his eyes at him from his nest of floor-cushions. “He probably wasn’t even going to throw that bottle at me, and they couldn’t arrest you for murder if nobody was dead! Stop exaggerating this into some fight-the-system crusade. You misjudged the situation and screwed up, why can’t you admit that?”  
  
“At least something changed!” Julan growled, thrusting an arm into the tunic so hard Iriel winced. “He’s not out there, hurting people any more. That fetcher deserves to be dead, and the world is a better place without him in it!”  
  
“And where does that end?” Jobasha’s voice was soft. “Can any of us truly say that he himself is free from fault? That he has never in his life hurt someone in a way they did not deserve, so that for them, perhaps, the world would be a better place, were he not in it?”  
  
“That has nothing to… You can’t seriously think what that n'wah did is…” Julan began spluttering, but Jobasha only looked at him, questioningly. Eventually, he stopped, his gaze folding inwards. “…No. I’ve hurt people.” He joined Ire on the cushions, slumped into silence, shifting his jaw and frowning.  
  
Ire thought of Anarenen, and the look in his eyes. Of Tsiya’s howls of betrayal as he left with her skooma. Of Rabinna, trembling on the bridge. He might have continued paging backwards through his own personal catalogue of sins indefinitely, but Jobasha intervened, continuing his speech.  
  
“This one cannot claim perfection either. He suspects very few can. We are all born blind, knowing nothing but our own needs. One must allow for growth and change, for our eyes to open to the needs of others. Death is the enemy of change, for death is the point at which all possibility of change for an individual is lost. Jobasha would prefer to change people, than to kill them. This is why he sells them books.”  
  
“Your view is compassionate, but incomplete.” Huleeya had barely spoken since they arrived, but now he looked up from his seat in the corner. “The existence of the Morag Tong is based upon the knowledge that a carefully chosen death can be a powerful and positive force for change. The alternative is frequently far more damaging. One death, the  _right_ death, can achieve the same result as thousands. You cheapen the value of life to suggest otherwise. Pauper and commoner do not suffer from war here as they do in the West, thanks to the honoured traditions of House War and the Morag Tong.”  
  
He made a dry rattling noise, and shook his head. “I am sorry that matters came to a violent end in the cornerclub, but I cannot forgive the narrowness of mind, and poverty of spirit that assures such people of their right to abuse and attack me, for spite.”  
  
“So, you agree with me that some peopledeserve death!” Julan said. “Those Camonna Tong were racists who hated you!”  
  
“So are many Ashlanders,” Jobasha interjected. “Do you believe your people incapable of cultural progression, or unworthy of being given the chance? Why is it that you were willing to defend an Argonian, despite your background? Was it through violence and death that you learned to do that?”  
  
Iriel noticed Jobasha had switched to a direct form of address. He had never fully determined the rules of Khajiiti grammar, but he suspected the third person was used to maintain a polite distance, a certain detachment. In this case, Jobasha had abandoned it in favour of increased emotional force.  
  
“…No. You’re right.” The self-righteous tirade in Julan’s eyes didn’t survive the journey to his mouth. “I read books,” he admitted.  
  
Jobasha smiled, inclining his head into a small bow. “A story,” he purred, “opens hearts in far better ways than daggers do. And a well-crafted character can create sympathy and understanding for an entire race.”  
  
“Maaaybe, but…” Julan was knitting his brows. “That goes both ways. It only works if the story and characters are done properly. A book could tell all kinds of lies about people, and if the story was good, people’d believe it.”  
  
“A story that relies on stereotypes instead of truths about people does not speak from the heart, and is, by definition, a bad story.”  
  
“That doesn’t stop people reading them! What about all these plays I keep seeing posters for all over the cantons, with the sexy Argonian maids, and the comedy Ashlander brutes? People love that guarshit!”  
  
Iriel hunkered down behind his cushions, as the crossfire continued around him.   
 _  
If only I could believe that change meant improvement. Things change, certainly, but they don’t necessarily get any better. Sometimes they get worse. Sometimes they get differently bad. How do you even measure goodness and badness? Sometimes it’s the same thing from different angles. Or for different people. Or… do I only tell myself that because it makes it easier not to try to improve anything?_  
  
  
Hours later, having filled several pages of notes with Huleeya’s interview, Iriel climbed back down to the cellar. Jobasha had laid down bedrolls and blankets, and Julan was already installed in one, engrossed in the third volume of  _A Dance In Fire_. Every so often, he sniggered to himself, making the small candle beside him flicker.  
  
“Enjoying yourself?” Ire enquired archly, collapsing next to him. “Oh yes,” came the cheerful reply. “It’s about horrible things happening to Imperial bureaucrats. There was a giant, blood-sucking tick feeding on him in the last chapter. Appropriate, huh?”  
  
“That does sound like your kind of thing,” Ire said, watching him carefully as he closed the book, and set it aside. “You’ve been absorbed, I take it?”  
  
“If you’re hoping I wasn’t listening in, too bad. To the Nerevarine cult stuff, anyway.”  
  
“I wasn’t  _hoping_ , exactly, just… so what do you make of it?”  
  
“Well… he’s not wrong about what Nerevar means to Ashlanders. He was the only one out of all the House khans who respected us, became one of us. We never would have followed him into battle, otherwise. In return, he swore to uphold our rights and traditions, but the Tribunal killed him before he could make good on that promise. They thought they could ignore us, but we knew the truth. You think they persecute us out of spite? It’s more than that. We know they murdered him, and they know that we know.”  
  
“Do you know anything about this Peakstar he mentioned? The previous Nerevarine?”  _alleged, so-called, self-proclaimed, shh, Ire, don’t bait him.  
_  
“A little. Mother remembers her from when she was a girl. I only know what she’s told me. She was Urshilaku, and Zaeshivasa was her Velothi name.” His expression turned sour. “What does it matter, now? She failed, she’s dead. On to the next one.”  
  
“That’s what I don’t understand,” said Iriel. “If she was the prophesied Nerevarine, how could she fail? Surely that disproves the whole concept?”  
  
“No! Because that’s not how prophecies work! They’re not about one, certain thing, one future, one person. They’re more like… I dunno… maps. Recipes, maybe. You need the right ingredients. You have to be a bearer of Nerevar’s soul. But after that… you’re on your own, trying to get it right. And if you fail, you die, and Azura sends the soul to begin again with someone new. That’s why I can’t be another failure. We’ve had too many already, and it’s getting worse. You saw the mess my people are in, with the Blight. They won’t survive to wait another twenty or thirty years for another Nerevarine.”  
  
He gave Iriel an incredulous look. “Malacath, Ire, why d'you think I act the way I do about this? If having a prophecy made sure of everything, I wouldn’t need to worry about it all the time, would I? Or worry about you asking silly questions to strange Argonians! But… forget about it. He didn’t say anything I couldn’t have told you myself. No big secrets, just common knowledge.”  
  
“So you’re not angry?”  
  
“I’m too tired. And I really, really don’t want to be mad at you tonight. You know how I feel about this job, so let’s just leave it be.” Julan held out weary arms, and Ire collapsed into them, all the breath leaving his body in a long groan of exhaustion and relief. In time, fingers kneading gently into the flesh of his back began to loosen the knot in his chest, and he could almost pretend the entire day hadn’t been a complete nightmare.  
  
“How’s your leg?” he asked after a few minutes, disengaging far enough to peer at it.  
  
“Not too bad,” Julan said, crooking a knee and thumping the heel of his hand into the underside of his thigh. “Muscles are knotted to Elsweyr and back, though. This always happens after healing spells.”  
  
“I can massage it, if you like,” offered Ire, as innocently as he could, which wasn’t very.  
  
Julan glanced over at Huleeya, who had descended the ladder, and was now curled up on the far bedroll, making gentle whirring noises. “Thanks, but… it’s probably best if you don’t.”  
  
“Are you sure? I’m quite good at it.”  
  
Julan didn’t quite meet his eye. “That’s what I’m worried about.”  
  
Ire smirked. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”  
  
“Oh, you’ll take  _that_ , will you?”  
  
“Among other things.”  
  
“Wh… Sheogorath, Ire.” Julan lay back, laughing and rubbing his eyes. “I don’t need you to explain what you meant by that, I can tell by your face. And I’m going to sleep.”  
  
  
Julan was proved a liar. Once the candle was blown out, Iriel could hear him moving around for a long time afterwards, constantly shifting position, his breathing never quite settling into the rhythm of sleep. After being elbowed for the third time, Ire gave up on trying to ignore it.  
  
“Is something wrong?” he whispered.  
  
There was an indistinct growl of irritation from the darkness next to him. “Sorry. Can’t sleep. Stupid brain won’t shut up.”  
  
“Can I do anything to help?”  
“No.”  
“If you’re sure.”  
  
There was silence for a while, then a faint scraping sound that Ire suspected to be Julan grinding his teeth. Then a frustrated sigh, rustling of movement, and then Julan’s red eyes were visible, inches from his. “Do you think I’m a violent person?”  
  
Iriel was taken by surprise. “Why are you asking me this?”  
  
“Just answer the question.”  
  
“Well…” Ire hesitated, painfully aware that his hesitation was not reassuring. “I mean…”  
  
“If you’re scared to tell me the truth because you think I’ll get angry, that tells me everything I need to know.”  
  
“Don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t say… I wouldn’t exactly… um… well, it’s partly a circumstantial thing, isn’t it? The things we’ve been doing, violence has often been unavoidable in order to survive, so…”  
  
“Maybe, but that’s not what I mean. You fight when you have to, but you’re not a violent person at heart. Forget what happens in battle… do you still think I’m violent?”  
  
“No. Of course not. You have a temper, perhaps, but if I thought you were seriously violent, I wouldn’t be with you.”  _And whatever the truth of the matter, it’s what you need to hear._  
  
“Huh. You think?” A heavy sigh. “I’m not so sure.”  
  
Iriel felt through the gloom, and found an arm. He stroked it, in what he hoped was a reassuring sort of way. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
A long silence. Eventually, Julan said, “When I was a kid, I used to hate the boys in the tribe. They’d yell things and pick fights with me, nothing serious, but that stuff gets to you when you’re young. So I’d tell myself I was better then they were, ‘cause I read books about the world, and they were violent s’wits who only cared about hunting and fighting. And… I mean… looking back, I was full of shit. Yes, the Ahemmusa boys were assholes sometimes, but so was I. We were all just kids, and I was jealous of them.”  
  
“I certainly found interacting with boys my own age to be an endless cavalcade of vileness, yes. I suspect it’s a cultural universal.”  
  
“That’s the thing! In the cities, everyone looks at an Ashlander and thinks 'violent savage’. But even if I was too stupid to see it as a kid, the Ahemmusa aren’t any more violent than anyone else. I’ve seen far worse, out here. Any one of my tribe are worth a hundred of those Camonna Tong scum.”

Ire squeezed his arm, gently. “It’s perfectly understandable to be frustrated if you know you’ll be labelled as a stupid, violent savage, regardless of your actions,” he offered. He’d thought it a rather bland, innocuous comment, but the arm slipped from beneath his fingers and Julan’s eyes became barely visible red crescents as he dropped his head.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ire faltered. “What did I say?”  
  
“Nothing! I mean, you’re not wrong, but… Gah, never mind. I’m bad at explaining.”   
  
 “No, you’re not. Keep going.”  
  
“It’s just that… I know they’re wrong about my people. But… maybe they’re not far wrong about me. I think… I am violent. Sometimes. I get angry, and I can’t think straight, and I do things I regret. That’s not new. But when I’m here, it’s worse, because every time I do it, some city s'wit will look at me and think that’s how all Ashlanders are! And sometimes… yes, sometimes that’s exactly what I’m angry about in the first place!”  
  
“You can’t blame yourself for other people’s bigoted judgements. It’s not your responsibility to make allowances for the atrophied brains of every narrow-minded idiot in this world.”  
  
“Not my responsibility?” His eyes were back, flaring fiercely. “What does it  _matter_ whose responsibility it is, if I attack the wrong person, and they have their powerful friends massacre my tribe? D'you think it’d make me feel any better, that it wasn’t my responsibility?” He exhaled noisily.  
  
“You get angry because the world is unfair, and people are terrible,” said Ire. “You try to change things. I admire that. It’s more than I have the courage to do. All I do is hide and run away.”  
  
“Yeah, but… I  _don’t_  make anything better. Things only get worse when I get angry. There must be a better way. But even smart people like Jobasha and Huleeya can’t agree, and I don’t know what’s right any more. I only know I keep screwing up.”  
  
Iriel dredged his mind for something to lighten the mood. “This job we’re doing,” he said. “Maybe Cosades wants us to research the Nerevarine because he’s writing a book. One that will change everyone’s minds about Ashlanders, and the Nerevarine, and make everything easier for you.”  
  
“A book?!” Julan was appalled. “He’d better not be! Sheogorath… imagine the terrible things a skooma-crazed Imperial could do to the image of my people and our culture!” He buried his face in the bedroll. “Thanks a lot. I’m going to have nightmares now.”


	87. patterns

“Mara’s arse. Would you look at these? I’d stain them just thinking about them. What kind of person wears white satin pants?”  
  
“A rich s'wit who can afford to wear a new pair every day. What’s going on with these sleeves? They’d catch on everything. You’d ruin them eating in them, never mind fighting in them.”  
  
“Eurgh. This one is velvet.”  
  
“What’s velvet?”  
  
“Touch it, touch it, go on! No, smoosh your whole hand into it!”  
  
“Gah! That’s horrible!”

“I object to the texture less than to the fact it has a  _direction_. You have to worry about whether it’s going the right way, not getting messed up or agitated! That is far too much responsibility for me. I can’t manage that for myself, never mind for a fucking garment.”  
  
“These things here are barely clothes at all. They’re just chest straps that go over a shirt. What’s the point?”  
  
“Auri-El, don’t ask me. Support structures for fancy buttons, I think. Ugh, why can’t anything be simple? Why does everything have to be bedecked in fripperies, and patterned all over? It’s so unnecessary. Offensive, almost.”  
  
“You don’t like patterns? I guess I’m used to them. Mother embroiders all my stuff. It’s probably not possible to make her stop. But these decorations are weird. What’s this stuff growing all over this one like lichen?”  
  
“Oh gods, it’s Alinori lace.Something about all the little holes really gives me the creeps. As if a small, nibbling creature’s been putting its unbearable little teeth into it.”  
  
“Do you  _gentlemen_ intend to actually purchaseanything?” shrilled the prim Imperial clothier, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles cracked with the strain. “Because if you aren’t genuine customers, I may have to ask you to leave.”  
  
Iriel gave her his best withering glare. “We  _might_ be customers,” he said, crisply. “We don’t know yet. We are currently engaged in browsing your wares.”  
  
Julan grinned at her. “I,” he said, “am the most genuine customer you have ever seen. You have no idea how serious I am about this. I wear clothes  _almost every day_ , I’ll have you know.”  
  
“It’s true!” said Ire, nodding vigorously. “I’ve seen him!”  
  
The clothier closed her eyes and began unfolding and refolding a shirt for the tenth time, blind fingers automatic.  
  
“Stendarr’s mercy, look at this atrocity. What exactly are you supposed to wear this to? Afternoon tea at the Shrine of Mephala?”  
  
“What’s all the string for?”  
  
“Some kind of lacing, although why you would ever need to unilaterally expose  _that_ area of your body, I’d rather not try to imagine.”  
  
“Look, it doesn’t even open, it’s all sewn down! These laces must be Mephalan, they’re a web of lies and deception.”  
  
The clothier was close to tears. “ _Please_  don’t touch it, that is a Colovian winnowing gown worn by initiates of Kynareth, and took a chapel of devoted acolytes six months to make. If you are looking for  _common_  clothing,” she added, in desperation, “there is a cheap trader’s just around the corner. Perhaps that would suit your needs better.”  
  
Iriel looked at Julan. “Entertainment aside, that does sound more suitable. Are we finished here?”  
  
“Oh, sure. You’d have to get me blind drunk to wear anything in this place, it’s all stuff Sheogorath’d reject as too over the top.”  
  
“True, it’s all a bit Sheltered Virgins of Shimmerene Unveiled, or possibly even The Cruel Kinlord’s Bartered Bride.”  
  
“A bit _what_?”  
  
“Erotic novels I found hidden in Firionwe’s parents’ library and read, out of morbid teenage curiosity. The heroines wore things like this, although they were always ripped to shreds by page sixteen. And I can’t see satin pants like those ones over there without expecting someone’s  _throbbing manhood_  or other terrible phallic descriptor to explode all the buttons off.”  
  
Julan giggled, and addressed the rigid mask of the clothier’s face. “How well are your buttons sewn on, here?” he demanded. “Have you had any complaints from customers about their throbbing manhoods escaping?”  
  
“Or worse, not escaping easily enough?” added Iriel, earnestly.  
  
  
  
‘We probably shouldn’t have antagonised her like that,“ Iriel whispered, as they headed through the canalworks, screams of "GET OUT OF MY SHOP!!!” still echoing off the walls. “If the Ordinators question her, she’ll hardly fail to remember our faces.”  
  
“I know,” Julan was exuberant, careless. “But I can’t resist riling up people like her, who look at me like I’m guarshit on their boots.”  
  
“And does it help?” Ire gave him a mock-serious glare. “Does it enact positive change in the world?”  
  
“Yes! It makes me feel better.”  
  
They passed the liquid roar of an outlet channel, gushing from the waistworks above into the sewers on the level below. As the noise receded behind them, Julan nudged Ire with his elbow. “Hey, so… those book titles you listed before. Veiled Virgins of something? Those really existed?”  
  
Iriel smirked. “The actual title of that one, if I remember correctly, was: Sheltered Virgins of Shimmerene: Unveiled Hearts. Part one in the Sheltered Virgins of Shimmerene series. Firi’s ma’s collection of erotic novels was quite extensive. I think she had almost all of the others, too: Unsealed Lips, Unshed Tears, Uncut… no, that can’t be right. Anyway, each one was about a different girl, and her risk-strewn journey into respectable marriage. This was the happy, lighthearted series, you see. There was another one by the same author, Fallen Maidens of Firsthold, that was all about girls who made Bad Choices and were Brought Low. Tragic cautionary tales, providing a safe outlet for certain kinds of fantasy about foreign or low-blooded men. That end badly, of course, to remind you that while it’s one thing to fantasise about this stuff, you should be sure not to actually  _do_  it.”  
  
Julan’s face radiated bemusement. “Sounds like you read a lot of these books, especially for someone who claims not to be a romantic.”  
  
“I didn’t say I  _enjoyed_  them, only that I  _read_  them. The vast majority were objectively terrible, badly written and politically indefensible. But I spent a lot of time at Firi’s kinhouse, and sometimes everyone forgot I was in the library. Once, they all went to bed, and I was still there, reading age-inappropriate smut until the small hours of the morning. Then I had to sneak out to pee, and her father thought I was a burglar. Then they fetched my ma.” He grimaced. “Until then, it was wonderful.”  
  
“So you  _did_  enjoy them!”  
  
“Well… I told you, I was curious. To thirteen-year-old Iriel, Sheltered Virgin of Lillandril, it was all utterly fascinating, if rather mystifying. I mean… I had no idea that if you were a woman, your entire life was apparently a constant gauntlet of having your breasts forcibly bared by someone or something. And the physical descriptions could be very odd. 'Limpid nipples’ was a phrase I once encountered. I was pretty sure, even at the time, that limpid was not a thing nipples should be.”  
  
“What does limpid mean?”  
  
“Transparent, but, you know, in a  _poetic_  way.”  
  
“Maybe she was using chameleon spells on them.”  
  
Ire snorted with laughter. “In that case  _my_  nipples are occasionally limpid. Never in a poetic way, though, so perhaps it doesn’t count.”  
  
“And you were seriously reading this guarshit purely out of curiosity? About girls’ nipples?”  
  
Iriel gave him a condescending look. “Cocks, Julan,” he enunciated loudly, as if addressing a deaf grandmother. “I was reading them for the cocks, I thought that went without saying, honestly.” He rolled his eyes. “Not that any of the fantasies presented were aimed at me in the slightest, but sexualised descriptions of men were not something I found easy to come across… ahem. Sorry, poor choice of words… not something I encountered frequently elsewhere. Even if most of the so-called heroes in these books weren’t my type at all. Arrogant, controlling bastards, basically. I preferred the heroes in the tragic stories, where the men were too lowblood, or too nice, or both, to get happy endings.”  
  
He smiled wistfully. “There was this one I loved, Flames of the Firelark. It’s about a girl who falls in passionate lust with the boy who works in her father’s firelark aviary. She rejects her noble fiancé for him, and they make wild love among the birdseed. But - horror! - he accidentally leaves open the cages, and the firelarks fly free! In the last few pages, the aviary, followed by the entire family estate, burns to the ground around them, and they die in the flames, still fucking, in this orgasmic explosion of devastation. It’s, y'know, a  _metaphor_.”  
  
“That was your favourite? You’re really not a romantic, are you?”  
  
“No, I’m just a miserable gay perv. Sorry.” He grinned. “And, for the record, that one was my second-favourite. My favourites were the ones about Lindaale of Dusk. She was a feisty kinsdaughter, forced into marriage with a cruel and arrogant prince. Which happens a lot in these novels, and usually, the girl learns to enjoy submitting to her lord’s will. For "will,” read cock, obviously, but also his actual will. Passivity is idealised. But the Duskstone novels were different. In them, Lindaale gradually gains the upper hand over her husband, by using her sexuality to manipulate him, and turn the tables. By the end of the series, he’s practically her slave. Behind closed doors, anyway.“

"So… it was saying women ought to have the power?”  
  
Iriel gave a brief, bitter laugh. “Not really. It was saying women might be allowed a certain type of simulated sexual power in the bedroom, in order to make them stop wanting to have genuine power in real life. You have to understand, the people commissioning and publishing these novels were being bankrolled - according to my mother, anyway, who lectured me about this - by some extremely traditionalist factions. Women have had legal equality in Summerset for thousands and thousands of years, we’ve had queens and generals and High Kinladies doing all sorts of things for millennia. Most marriages are entered into on a relatively equal basis, in theory.” A brief shrug as he drew breath for the finale of his rant.  
  
“Which means you can tell exactly how slowly social change moves in my country, by the fact there are still people who think this is a terrible modern development, and should be discouraged. So they romanticise this ancient, hyper-chivalric, possibly completely apocryphal era when women were still, well. Sheltered virgins. And even today, in the upper castes, marriages, marital fidelity and the parentage of children is literally life and death stuff. These books were one way of trying to keep women in line, to romanticise proper marriage to the "right” man, and to warn of what happens to those who rebel. And to encourage girls to find dominant, patriarchal, highblood arsewipes appealing, with these fantasies that they can change them, or that the men will come to love them, and perhaps become one percent less dickish.“  
  
"Hang on, go back.” Julan’s face had been veering between bemused and incredulous for most of Iriel’s lecture, but now it was stuck on incredulous. “Your mother told you all this? About erotic romance novels? Was that a normal conversation in your family?”  
  
Iriel’s cheerful didacticism was derailed by an attack of awkward hair tugging and a slight flush about the ears. “Ah, no… see, she’d found the notebook under my mattress,” he confessed, twisting a loose strand. “The one in which I had copied out… purely for experimental purposes… certain scenes from Duskstone book three, Lindaale’s Contract, in which the part of Lindaale’s shitty but irritatingly hot husband Ralentir remained unchanged, and, um… the part of Lindaale was played by a young man not  _completely_  dissimilar to myself. If I had white hair and violet eyes– would you please stop making that face, I was veryyoung! I panicked and lied to ma that Firionwe wrote it. In… my handwriting. It was a difficult conversation. So was the one with Firi, after my ma told her ma about it.”   
  
He gave a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll stop boring you with all this now, shall I? Look, there’s the trader’s. Let’s forget we ever had this discussion.”  
  
  
  
“I don’t know which is worse,” Julan muttered, stuffing his purchases into his shoulder-bag. “Fancy stores like that first one that only have a few things, but they’re all silk thread, ebony buttons and cost your weight in gold… or places like  _that_  one. Crammed to the ceiling with every kind of useless junk under the sun, all so badly made it falls apart after a day, and you have to buy another, and it becomes this whole cycle of waste and pointlessness and money and… gah. It really gets to me.” He yanked on an errant shirt-sleeve protruding from his bag, as if hoping it would disintegrate to prove his point.  
  
“At least we found some slightly more bearable clothes,” said Iriel, soothingly. He had already changed into his, which comprised a shapeless, collarless shirt in a smokily nondescript blue-grey, and some black pants. Iriel disliked black clothes, finding the contrast with his skintone unpleasantly stark, but these were long and fitted in a way that made up for a lot of things, even the dead mouse in one of the pockets. “I haven’t seen a bookshop down here, yet,” he said. “It must be in the other canalworks. We’ll have to go back up to the waistworks level, and find the stairs on the opposite side.”  
  
“The waistworks’ll be crawling with Ordinators. There’s no way to get through on this level?”  
  
“Nnnn…” Iriel made a sour face. “I’ve heard of a route, but I’d rather not have to use it. We’d be better off risking the waistworks. Give me a moment to work up the nerve.” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose a few times, while Julan took the opportunity to realign his joints, eliciting sharp clicks from his neck and knuckles. Ire flinched at the sound, but before protesting, he remembered something else.

“I saw you looking at that Barenziah series back in there, he said, indicating the junk shop behind them. “That book is actually an interesting counterpoint to most Summerset romance novels. An example of a romance novel as personal propaganda, designed to create a particular kind of sympathetic portrayal of a hypersexual heroine, that privately appeals to a Dunmeri audience, while allowing them - and Barenziah herself - to disavow it publicly. Although she undoubtedly approved it, secretly.”

“Hang on.” Julan was frowning. “The Real Barenziah isn’t a romance novel! It’s a historical biography.” He saw Iriel’s face. “Stop that! It is  _not_ a romance novel!”  
  
“I  _have_ read it, you know,” said Iriel, trying to rein in his smirk. “I got through the whole thing while I was coming off the sugar and bored senseless. It is a romance novel, and a very classical one, at that. Barenziah has a lot of wild sex with unsuitable men, but finally realises her true heart’s desire is to settle down in her sensible arranged marriage, and pop out kids. The only reason it wouldn’t play well with a Summerset audience, is they wouldn’t sanction her enthusiasm. All the premarital sex would have to be far more rapey and non-consensual. Speaking of which, you should read how Dunmer are depicted in Altmeri romance stories.”  
  
“Do I really want to know?”

Ire lost control of his smirk again. “Probably not, but I’m telling you anyway. You see, lower caste or otherwise unsuitable Altmer men get to be tragic romantic heroes, but foreign men are different. It’s too important that girls be warned away from them to romanticise them even a little. So they play the villains: the evil characters who threaten the purity of the Altmeri bloodline. And Dunmer men are the worst of the lot: dangerous, savage, hypersexual beasts, with black hearts and menacing red eyes.”

“I see.”  
  
At his tone, Iriel’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I… hoped you’d find that funny.”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
"Oh gods. Fuck, I’m an idiot.” He extended an apologetic hand to Julan’s shoulder. “What can I do to cheer you up?”

Julan brushed him off with eye-rolling exasperation. “It’s  _fine_ , leave it!” He forced a final crick from his neck, and began heading out across the canalworks. As Ire caught up, he glanced round, a grin stealing across his face. “You really want to make me laugh? Tell me that story you rewrote. In detail. And don’t pretend you can’t remember, because I know you can.”

Ire was about to open the floodgates on a tirade of mortified protest, when he stopped. Heavy boots were approaching down the stairs immediately ahead of them, and soon the blue and gold enamel of an Ordinator’s uniformed feet could be seen.  
  
Iriel didn’t wait for the rest of him. Grabbing Julan by the arm, he dragged him towards a small, dusty door in the nearby wall. It was labelled in engraved Dunmeris script above, and below, a translation in Tamrielic: Foreign Quarter Tomb.


	88. invisibility

“Iriel!”  
“Shhh!”  
“Where are we?!”  
“Hush!”  
“Is this a–mmmph!!”  
“Do I have to Silence you? They’re right outside!”  
  
Yet again, Ire cowered in the darkness, listening to the Ordinators outside. But this was no friendly bookseller’s basement he was hiding in, and he knew it.  
  
Auri-fucking-El, I spend too much time in tombs. As a living person, the recommended daily amount of time spent in tombs is zero seconds. I am currently at serious risk of overdosing on mortality, and I hear it’s fatal. Of course, getting caught by Ordinators is also frequently bad for your health.  
  
He pressed his hand tighter over Julan’s mouth until the other elf began clawing at his fingers, red eyes bulging.

Ire found Dunmeri attitudes to the dead discomfiting in the extreme. Altmeri tombs… well, they weren’t  _tombs_ , for a start. They were places of light and joy, where lost loved ones were remembered and honoured. Their discarded physical shells were reverently interred, but there was no suggestion that the person was still around, in any sense. That was the great bliss of dying! Their soul was in Aetherius alongside the Great Ancestors, finally freed from the squalid mortal prison that was Mundus.  
  
This had drawn petulant questions from Iriel in his youth, when slotted into his best clothes and escorted from an early age to pay his respects to his paternal grandparents. Far too lowblooded for a vault, their small shrine lay among the others of their caste in the appropriate Field of the Blessed.  
  
“But you said they couldn’t see me,” he had complained, squirming in his uncomfortably high collar and heel-shredding shoes. “Why are we taking them flowers, if they don’t even know we’re here?”  
  
“To teach you respect for your line,” his mother had said, which made no sense to him at all, but he knew better than to answer back when she had that tone.   
  
His father had ignored them both, squatting before the tiny carved images of copperfish and sindil tree, touching them softly with his long, rope-roughened fingers.  
  
Iriel had doubts about Aetherius, even as a child, quickly developing a robust suspicion of things grown-ups told him were going to be wonderful. Later, he decided that, knowing his luck, he’d get shuffled into an Aedric plane full of other Altmer, like being trapped at a party for eternity. He sometimes wondered if this thought had saved his life in his teens, making suicide far too risky a proposition, even he hadn’t been a physical coward with an abiding horror of pain. The possibility of anything but nothingness waiting for him beyond the veil was too terrible to bear.  
  
Consequently, he had seized upon the psychagogic theory put forward in Enchantment class at the Tower: the soul is energy, no more. Identity is a feature of physical bodies, he was taught, and once the body is gone, the soul is no longer beholden to its fragile idiosyncrasies. Ghosts occur because when a soul is trapped on Mundus, it reproduces twisted echoes of the container it used to fill, but the real person died with the flesh that formed them.  
  
In Aetherius, the soul returns to the source of magicka, becoming part of that infinite possibility. Or it enters the Dreamsleeve, to feed the world’s hunger for new life. But either way, a soul in Aetherius has no more individual identity than a raindrop falling into a great ocean. Iriel no longer wanted to die, on average, but he still found this a reassuring concept, especially on days when the mere contemplation of an Altmeri lifespan in his own company felt like crawling along the bottom of a swamp.  
  
What was considerably less reassuring was the local habit of keeping the dead, as Ire saw it,  _unnecessarily_  close, souls magically bound to ritual objects decorated with fragments of bone and other taxidermatological unpleasantries. And then there were the souls they didn’t even bother removing from their bodies. The so-called guardians. The pustulent, flesh-twisted bonewalkers. The  _skeletons_. Altmeri death rites were pointless, Iriel considered, but Dunmeri ones were, frankly, obscene.  
  
He could still hear the heavy boots of the Ordinators outside, the ceramic scrape of enamelled armour shifting against itself, rough voices barking commands.   
  
Julan had escaped Ire’s attempts to gag him, but was thankfully remaining silent. Now, he moved away from the door, beckoning Iriel towards the inner darkness, where Ire could just make out a flight of stone steps descending into the black.   
  
Ire cast Night Eye. Heralded by a popping sensation in the backs of his eyes, his surroundings came into sickly, green-tinged focus. Clenching his jaw against the horror of the very air he breathed, he followed Julan down the steps, until such a point at which soft voices would be undetectable from outside.  
  
“Will the guards come in here?” whispered Ire, eyes flicking constantly back up to the entrance.  
  
“How should I know?” Julan hissed back. “But you’d think if they were going to, they’d have done it by now. It’s gone quiet. Maybe they’ve left.”  
  
“Or they’ve stationed one in the canalworks, and he’s standing silently, waiting until we open the door,” said Ire. “Ordinators can stand in one place for hours.”   
  
“Must be the sticks up their asses,” Julan muttered.  
  
Afterwards, Ire thought up a number of comments he could have made about that particular expression, ranked on a scientific scale of acidity to baseness. At the time, he was frightened out of his wits, and only said: “We know they’re monitoring the Intervention points, so that’s not an option. Do you think we should Recall home?”  
  
“And spend another night on the boat from Sadrith Mora? Paying good money for sailors to scowl at me if I so much as breathe on you? Let’s wait until our backs are really against the wall.”  
  
Iriel had transferred his attention to the bottom of the stairs, where another doorway lay in wait. Dry rustling, bony clicks and even a few eldritch susurrations were emanating from it. “Julan,” he said, his voice beginning to fray at the edges, “we are trapped between the city guard and a tombful of fucking undead. I honestly do not know which ones I am more afraid of. My back could not feel further against the wall if I were  _actual lichen_.”  
  
“All right, all right, let me think.” Julan pushed his hair back from his forehead. “If we can find the local guild boss, he might be able to fix this bounty, but we have to get to the other side of the canalworks. You said there was a way. You meant through this tomb, didn’t you?”  
  
“That’s what I heard, but…”  
  
“So we’ll go through the tomb.”  
  
“I thought you hated fighting tomb guardians.”  
  
“I do, for important religious and moral reasons. However, I also hate fighting Ordinators, for important keeping-my-guts-inside-my-body reasons.”  
  
Iriel’s mouth twisted, as multiple varieties of terror competed for space in his brain. “For what it’s worth, I don’t like fighting undead either,” he said. “It’s excruciating. I’d prefer to be invisible, and avoid them, but I don’t think it could work. I’d need to hide both of us, maintain the Calm spells I need to deal with them,  _and_ have enough energy left to defend myself if we slipped up, and they saw us.”  
  
“D'you really think Calm spells are a great idea, after what happened last time?”  
  
“Fuck you  _all_  the way off, don’t you dare– Ugh… sorry, sorry… but I know what I’m doing. I’ll lower the intensity of the spell. But that means I’ll still be nervous, and more likely to make errors somewhere else. If it stretches right across the Quarter, this tomb must be huge. I don’t think I can do it.”  
  
“I guess we have no choice but to fight them, then. Malacath, Ire, I should have known better than to believe this was going to be a simple trip. If I had my weapons and armour, this’d be different. My dagger’ll be next to useless on undead, but at least we both have spells.” He paused. “We  _do_  both have magic. And I know a couple of illusion spells - you taught me Silence already. Can’t you show me how to cast Invisibility? Then we might get through this with a lot less trouble.”  
  
Ire considered. “I… suppose we have the time. There’s no harm in trying.”  
  
  
“Invisibility is actually a lot simpler than most people suppose.” Iriel sat opposite Julan, on the lowest of the dusty stone steps. “It’s not a matter of altering your body, all you do is sort of…  _twist_ the way light moves around it. So people don’t see you, they see what’s behind you, and it creates the optical illusion that you aren’t there. It’s quite crude, and easily dispelled by opening a door, or moving an object. As soon as you interfere with something visible, the disjunct becomes obvious, and the whole effect is shattered.”  
  
“So it’s not the same as that other thing you do, where you get sort of… blurry, and I keep forgetting where you’re standing?”  
  
“No. That’s Chameleon. At least, that’s what a professor once called it, when he caught me accidentally doing it in class. I admit, I don’t fully understand Chameleon myself. I just started casting it, somehow, when I was especially desperate to… not be there. I can’t cast it on other people, and I don’t think I could teach it. I don’t even have a verbal incantation to focus it, only finger positions, and a particular mental state. I think I’m weird about visibility spells, though. I’m told most people find them considerably more difficult to cast than I do.”  
  
“Well, teach me the invisibility one. Maybe I’ll find it easy, too. You never know, I might be weirder than you thought. Or else I’m catching weirdness from you.”   
  
There was a smile in Julan’s voice, but Iriel was horrified. “Oh gods,” he muttered, “I hope not. I’d never forgive myself.”  
  
  
Later, Iriel would look back on many of these conversations with Julan, and consider that he had been worried about entirely the wrong things.


	89. binding

There is a certain debate amongst Ancestor-fearing Dunmer. It is rarely shared with outlanders, who cannot be trusted to understand the nuance and sensitivity of the issues and arguments involved. However, it can be summarised, broadly, in the question: “So, is that hideous screeching bonewalker pulling the arms off of that tomb raider  _really_  Auntie Drulene, or what?”

If you can overcome their reluctance to publicly deviate from the traditional cultural line, you will find that Dunmer beliefs, as with anything of this kind, vary from individual to individual. Dunmer, too, however pious, question the nature of the soul and its condition after death. Even if they hold that a soul bound into an undead creature initially preserves the identity of the deceased, they may accept that it is now in a compromised form. Driven mad by the conditions of its bondage - conditions which make senile dementia seem trivial in comparison - it would be unfair to consider it the same person it was before. Others may even privately suspect, like Iriel, that once torn from a body, the soul is merely an anonymous source of indifferent energy, animating peaceful bones and ashes into monstrous edifices of astonishing rage and violence. However, their answer may also be influenced by what Auntie Drulene was like when she was alive.  
  
Iriel was not currently pondering these important issues. He was biting down on a scream, nose inches from the shrouded, skeletal toes of a bonelord. Seconds earlier, Julan had hit his invisible shoulder against yet another urn and ricocheted into Ire. Unseen, but all-too-tangible legs tangling, they’d crashed to the dusty floor. At the sound, the creature had rotated slowly and shuffled forwards until it creaked uneasily above them.  
  
Ire felt something small bounce off his head. It rolled in front of his eyes. A tooth. Only Julan’s weight forcing him into the floor prevented him from losing it completely. They lay still, lungs taut to bursting. Whatever was animating the bonelord, perception was not its strong point. After several agonising seconds, it scraped off in another direction, giving Julan and Iriel time to regain their feet.  
  
The next room was another long passage, thankfully empty, since the invisibility effect didn’t last past the entrance. Ire threw a lock spell onto the door behind them, and began coughing the dust out of his lungs.  
  
Julan dabbed at his nose. “You cracked me in the face when you were getting up,” he grumbled.  
  
Ire had little sympathy. “It was your fault we fell! And my shins are a mess of bruises from where you keep stumbling into me! You have no awareness of your body!”  
  
“That’s because I can’t  _see_  it!”

Ire frowned. “I don’t believe that. You’re a warrior. You whirl a blade around your body all the time, far too quickly for you to depend on seeing exactly where everything is at every moment. Perhaps by constantly attempting to determine your position by sight, you’re actually making things more difficult for yourself. You should be allowing your instinctive self-awareness to guide you.”  
  
“What?”  
“You’re trying too hard. Close your eyes.”  
“What?!”  
“Recast the spell and close your eyes. Trust me.”  
  
Iriel moved softly but surely through the tomb, leading Julan by the hand. He paused at the threshold of a burial chamber, keeping his breathing smooth and even, as a skeletal guard passed in front of him. Then quick, light steps across the room, and into the welcome darkness of the next passage. After a while, he fell into the rhythm of it, his body syncing with the tomb’s pattern of rooms, patrols, torchlight and shadow.  
  
His fear began to fade, replaced by a sharp rush of elation in his power, this ability to enter a space and pass through it entirely on his own terms. To meet violence, not with equivalent violence, but with grace, thoughtfulness and toleration.  
  
_Death is the removal of possibilities. It’s true, my methods don’t change anything. This is their strength. I am preserving all possibilities intact._   _Even those of hideous bonethings. It’s called the high moral ground, you festering wretches._    
  
He grinned a grin known only to himself, and squeezed Julan’s hand in the darkness.  
  
One final room, scuttling with skeletons. A careful calculation of timing, a nerve-shredding wait until the right moment, then a giddy sprint to the exit on the other side. Through it, they discovered the stairs to the eastern canalworks, and Iriel laughed out loud as he secured the door behind him with a spell.  
  
“Auri-fucking-El!” he panted, beaming at Julan as they reappeared.  
  
Julan blinked, disorientated, and stared at his hands, as if for the first time. “I… uh… well, it worked. I guess…”  
  
“You  _guess?!_ ” Ire was buzzing with triumph. “Did you  _see_  me facing down all those skeletons? Did you?” He started laughing again. “No! You fucking  _didn’t_ , because I was amazing!”  
  
He threw himself against Julan, who raised a reflexive arm. “Ire… what are you doing now?” Ire batted the arm away, and began shoving Julan’s chest with both hands. Julan braced his feet, and stared at him in immobile confusion. “Is something wrong?”  
  
Ire glared at him. “Yes! I’m trying to push you up against the wall and kiss you, and you are  _not_  co-operating!”  
  
“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t… um… can you try it again, now?”  
  
“Are you sure? I can give two weeks’ notice in writing, if you pref–mmmmph… stop plagiarising my ideas, you–mmmph…”  
_  
_ Crushed breathless and giggling between cold stone and warm flesh, Iriel felt a wild, dangerous joy racing through him.  
  
_This is probably even more sacrilegious than making out in a Cult prayer booth. Or what Hiranel and I did in the Tower of the Stars. And I could not give one single, solitary, fuck about that. I wonder if he does? Perhaps if it’s not his own ancestors watching, it doesn’t count!_  
  
Beneath Julan’s, his mouth broke into a grin, and the other elf pulled away far enough to sigh in bemusement. “What are you laughing at now?”  
  
“Nothing!”  
  
“Iriel…” He felt fingers sliding up his neck and sudden breath in his ear as Julan leaned in to whisper, “…if you’re about to make a  _bone_  joke…”  
  
“I wasn’t!”  
  
“…then I will tipyou head-first into a burial urn, you hear me?”  
  
“I  _wasn’t!!_ ”  
  
“Or any kind of comment about raising the dead.”  
  
“I wasn’t, that was all  _you_ , you’re worse than me! Anyway, I’d like to see you tryputting me into a fucking urn.”  
  
“Wouldyou?” Gravelly Dunmeri laughter, and arms encircling his hips with menaces. Ire began debating whether the friction of the wall behind him would let him get away with wrapping his legs around Julan’s waist, or whether that would end in embarrassment and bruises.  _Almost certainly the latter. I wonder what would happen if I cast a very small amount of levit–aaagh!  
  
_ Julan’s kisses had grown rougher, clumsy with heat, and an unfortunate clash of jaws sent Ire into a mental spasm of unpleasant associations.  _don'tthinkaboutteeth don'tthinkabouttee… oh, fuck, it’s no use._ He turned his head away, sighing at his brain’s unerring ability to ruin the mood.   
  
A few seconds later, Julan got the hint, and tilted his head in silent question: what’s wrong? did I do something? Ire could only shake his head:  _nothing, it’s me, always me._  
  
“I have to say,” he said, folding his arms around Julan’s shoulders, fingers idly twisting the hair at the nape of his neck, “I still don’t fully understand the Dunmer position on necromancy, and why it’s so different from ancestor worship.”  
  
Julan groaned. “Now? You want to have  _this_ argument, now?”  
  
Ire shook his head, making soothing motions with his fingers. “I’m not looking for a fight! I’m honestly curious!”  
  
There was silence for a moment. “I don’t get how you could possibly think the two are similar,” Julan said, his voice several degrees colder than the stone at Ire’s back.  
  
“Because both involve ritually binding the souls of the dead for the benefit of the living?”  
  
“That’s like saying pushing an old woman off a cliff into the sea is the same as helping your grandmother across a stream, because they both involve shifting old ladies over water!”  
  
“Ex _cuse_  me?”  
  
“Or the difference between sex and rape, if you want a cruder image.” Julan shifted his weight from Iriel, and moved back a step.  
  
Ire’s Night Eye spell had worn off, but he could see Julan’s eyes in the darkness, and his silhouetted shape, arms folded. “You’re saying it’s about consent?” he ventured.

“Right!” Julan’s exclamation alarmed even himself with the way it echoed across the tomb, and he continued in quieter, though still emphatic, tones. “When you’re initiated into an ancestor cult, you promise things! To honour the ancestors in life, and to protect and guide the tribe in death. Nobody’s  _binding_ anyone, any more than… than we were binding each other just now! Dedicating your soul to an ancestor cult is freely chosen.”  
  
“Even the guardians? The bonewalkers? They chose to become that?”  
  
“No! But that’s different again. It’s a punishment given to those who betrayed the clan, who died dishonourably. I’m talking about the spirits of the Kuel Muutibadon, the Waiting Door.”

Ire rubbed his chin. “When I was at Ahemmusa Camp, Mamaea told me a little about the… it began with a k. The ancestral relics.”  
  
“ _Kausagursha_. It sort of means ghost box, but box isn’t the whole meaning. Home. Dwelling. Most tribes have tombs or burial grounds as well, but we always have something to carry with the tribe. So they can be there when we need them. And they can be with us. Because it’s not about  _binding_ , it’s about love. And family. And vowing to protect them with your entire being, forever, no matter what. It has absolutely nothing in common with forcing the souls of strangers back into rotting corpses to kill some Telvanni wizard’s rival of the week! It’s one of the most important things you can do for the people you care about. And for yourself, because it means that even after you die, you’ll still be near your loved ones. You’ll never be alone.”

Ire swallowed. “So… did you…?”  
  
“You  _know_  I couldn’t. That’s what being an outcast  _means_.”  
  
“Doesn’t your mother have ancestors?”  
  
“Not that she speaks to. She was Urshilaku before she was Ahemmusa. She’s an exile twice over, she says. There’s a whole ritual for it, to exclude your soul from the ghostline. So we only have each other. I guess… when she dies, she’ll become my first ancestor.”  
  
Iriel’s face convulsed, as various unpleasant possibilities played out behind his eyes. “And… that means you’ll… what? Put her spirit in a box and carry it around with you?”  
  
Julan was slow to answer, worrying a fragment of bone on the ground with the toe of his boot. “Maybe?” he said. “I’m hoping that’s not something I’ll have to deal with for a while, but…”  
  
“Oh  _gods_.”  
  
“She wouldn’t be able to  _spy_  on me, it’s not likethat. There are ritualsto communicate with–”  
  
“I don’t care! This gets worse and worse the more I think about it.”  
  
Julan snorted. “Says the would-be enchanter who spent an entire day sulking after he destroyed a Golden Saint soulgem, trying to put her into a ring.” He held out a hand. “Come on. Stop fussing and let’s get out of here.”  
  
Iriel allowed himself to be towed towards the tomb exit, but didn’t stop talking. “As I recall, you rather liked that Golden Saint. I suspect you wouldn’t have minded having  _her_  soul hanging around. You’re asking me to live with the knowledge your fucking mother’d be hiding under the bed all the time! Remind me to send her my sincerest best wishes for her continued good health!”  
  
Julan laughed. As Ire neared the top of the stairs, he hooked an arm round his waist and pulled him close. “If it means you stop trying to fireball her,” he hissed into Iriel’s ear, “I’ll take it as a blessing.”


	90. mess

“Well.” The Thieves Guild boss known only to Iriel as the Gentleman, steepled his perfectly manicured fingers. “You boys seem to have gotten yourselves into rather a lot of trouble. Legs?” Ire was confused until he realised that the Gentleman had addressed this last word to the smoothly polished Dunmer at his elbow. “Would you be so kind as to retrieve this morning’s bounty list?”  
  
They waited for the document, lined up like naughty schoolchildren in front of the Gentleman’s burnished copperwood desk. Iriel squirmed as he was appraised by the Redguard man’s polite, yet discerning eye. He was painfully aware of the tomb-dust caking his pants, and the hideous mess his hair was undoubtedly in.  
  
He risked a sidelong glance at his accomplice.  _At least my hair can’t be worse than Julan’s. Probably. But anyone would look like a gutter-get, sharing a room with the Gentleman. Now I know what kind of person wears white satin pants._

The Gentleman perused the bounty list as if selecting a wine to accompany dinner. At last, he nodded, and handed it back to his assistant. “Yes,” he said, “Rather a lot of trouble, indeed.” He adopted the pained expression of an experienced headmaster, who tries so hard to have faith in his young charges, and is always so sadly unsurprised when, yet again, he finds custard in the pockets of his coat. “Two men dead, and one in the Temple infirmary in a serious condition. Messy. Extremely messy. Don’t you think?”  
  
“It was self-defence,” protested Julan, but without much conviction.  
  
Iriel swallowed. “Two dead? I didn’t… I thought I only cast a disabling shock spell, not…”  
  
“Oh, you  _thought_ , did you? Sounds like you didn’t have as much control of it as you  _thought_ , then. Or they had weak hearts, or any number of other factors beyond the narrow boundaries of what you  _thought_.”  
  
“They were Camonna Tong,” Julan said, trying another line of defence. “We were helping the Guild by getting rid of them.”  
  
That was a mistake, and he knew it when the Gentleman’s eyes hardened. “I’m sorry,” the Redguard said, in tones of smoothest ice. “Have you gained a recent promotion I’m unaware of? Are you now qualified to decide, without the knowledge and agreement of the guildbosses, how to conduct our war with the Camonna Tong?”  
  
“…no, Boss.”  
  
“Or are you, in fact, a pair of shit-for-brains Blackcaps who decided to engage in the unauthorised murder of citizens, one of whom was a member of a Hlaalu ranking family?”  
  
“But–!” Iriel elbowed Julan in the ribs, hard. “Yes, Boss,” they chorused miserably.  
  
“In a busy Foreign Quarter cornerclub, in the sight of multiple witnesses?”  
  
“…yes, Boss.”  
  
“And now you want me to drag your worthless hind ends out of this mile-high garbage-fire, is that it?”  
  
“……yes, Boss. Sorry, Boss.”  
  
The Gentleman, mollified by their show of contrition, exhaled, and adjusted his cuffs. When he next spoke, it was in a more peaceable manner. “You’re Helende’s new boys, aren’t you? Julan the Ashlander and… Irriel, was it?”  
  
“Iriel. Eye-ree-el.”  
  
“Of?”  
  
“Nowhere important. Just Iriel. Ire, if even three syllables seems too much like hard work.”  
  
The Gentleman glanced up sharply. “Careful. It’s insolence like that, coupled with memorable mistakes, that results in people getting stuck with nicknames they’d rather forget. Right, Crazy Legs?” The responsible-looking Dunmer hovering by the wall gave a brief, brittle smile.  
  
Iriel froze, mentally rebuttoning his lip.  _I wasn’t even trying to be insolent! Xarxes, this is why I hate talking to anyone important. I can’t do deferential._  
  
“Two things,” said the Gentleman. “There are two things that’re going to save you with me today. One has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the fact I know Helende is short-handed right now, and doesn’t need any more of her people behind bars. Satakal only knows what she’s doing with them. I shall have to have a little talk with her, if this continues.” Guilt sank into Iriel’s stomach like a corpse to the bottom of a sewer.  
  
“The second thing is that, despite whatever thrice-cursed unpleasantness no doubt went down in the Black Shalk last night, neither of you has tried to shift the blame. Tried to gain favour with me by throwing the other out of the boat. I like to see that. Loyalty to your fellow thieves, solidarity under questioning. Good qualities. So while it won’t be easy, I think I can pull some strings to make your legal problems disappear.” He raised a sculpted eyebrow to Crazy Legs, who began taking papers from a bureau.  
  
“However,” the Gentleman continued, “there’s still the matter of the cost. Two murders isn’t cheap to make disappear, and with the other so close to death, I have to play it safe, and charge you for three. Plus the assaults on top, plus administration. Legs, give them a number.”  
  
The Dunmer’s quill was a blur as he scribbled. “With standard guild discount, it comes to three thousand gold. Per person.”  
  
He had been bracing for it, but it was still a kick in the teeth. Julan looked even more devastated. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning to Ire with an agonised look. “We came here to earn money, but because of me, we’ll be in debt for months over this.”  
  
Ire flapped a dismissive hand at him. “It wasn’t your fault. Anything could have happened in that tavern, and we made it out alive. Weren’t you the one who said you’d rather have me than any amount of money? Now you get to prove it.” He smiled weakly. “Filthy decadence, remember? Sadly, I’m also filthy, and working on decadent, so…” He trailed off, his attempts at levity crushed like ladybirds beneath Julan’s steamroller stare.  
  
“You should have let me bring my glass sword,” Julan muttered bleakly. “That must be worth something. When we get back, we should sell it and–”  
  
“No!” Ire was indignant. “No way am I letting you sell that sword! You love that fucking sword! Didn’t you  _name_ the bloody thing? And the way you stroke it when you’re cleaning it, you’re lucky I’m not the jealous type.” He gently twitched a dead spider out of Julan’s hair. “We’ll think of something.”  
  
“Like  _what?_  Rob the Temple vaults?!”  
  
Julan’s aura of impending doom was spreading out around him, and the more Iriel tried to think of a solution, the more his attempts to be the calm, reasonable one unravelled. “I have no fucking clue,” he admitted, fingers beginning their nervous dance.  
  
The Gentleman was listening, with barely-concealed amusement. “The Great House vaults would be a far more lucrative proposition,” he remarked. “However, I wouldn’t recommend it at your current rank.”  
  
Ire rounded on him. “Well, what  _would_ you recommend? I have barely a hundred gold to my name, and  _he_ ,” Ire actually paused at this point purely in order to roll his eyes, “ _he_ invested all his money in street urchins!”  
  
“Children are our future,” the Gentleman commented dryly.  
  
“Auri-El, I hope not,” said Ire, affecting horror. “They certainly better not be  _my_ future! I was a child once, and it was awful, you can’t make me do it again! And if babies are involved, I quit. I will quit everything. They are creepy, and their heads are too big, and–”  
  
Nerves unhinging his verbal filter, he might have continued in this vein for some time, had Julan not gently pinned his flailing arms until he made eye contact, and told him firmly, “Iriel. Stop talking.”  
  
“If you’re quite finished,” the Gentleman said, “I do, in fact, have an alternative suggestion. Work it off. The Guild always has jobs. I don’t have anything suitable for a Blackcap right now, but I’ll put the word out among the other bosses, and let them know you have a debt to pay down.”  
  
Julan nodded, gratefully, but Iriel’s increasingly agitated monologue had identified a new seam of stress to begin mining from the depths of his brain. “Oh!” he said, eyes wide. “Great! Now we have to take every job we can get, no matter how dangerous and immoral, no matter who gets hurt, or loses things they care about. I thought when I kicked the sugar, I wouldn’t have to do that any more, that I could choose the jobs that made me hate myself least, that wouldn’t leave me a complete wreck, afterwards. Because it’s already too much, too much weighing down on me, too much that I can’t take back!”  
  
He could feel himself melting down, beginning to say things it was very unwise to say in the presence of the Gentleman, but he had no power to stop himself now, and batted away Julan’s hand on his arm. “I’m not cut out to be a thief. I never was, but it was the price I paid to have friends again. Family, almost, I thought… but it’s all so conditional, isn’t it? Everything always is! Even family,  _especially_ family! You’re loved as long as you perform a role, fulfil the desired function! No!!” - he refused to let Julan interrupt - “You can’t tell me it’s not true! Helende’s been very kind to me, but if I said I wanted to stop doing jobs for the Guild, she’d kick me out! Perhaps worse! I know too much, don’t I? Does anyone even get to leave the Guild alive?!”  
  
He paused for breath, felt everyone’s eyes on him, and remembered where he was. He made a choked, despairing noise, and covered his face with his hands.  
  
After a moment, he felt something being waved under his nose. It was an immaculately clean handkerchief, held between the Gentleman’s ring-laden fingers. He took it, and blew his nose. “You can keep that,” the Gentleman said, before he could attempt to return it. “I have plenty more. Furthermore, I have a proposal for you. One you might find more to your taste.”  
  
When Ire looked up, the Gentleman’s face bore a mysterious smile. “I’ve been searching for the right agents for a certain… project, and my instincts say the two of you might be exactly who I’ve been looking for. Have you ever heard of the Bal Molagmer?”


	91. signs

“I don’t care if you think it’s ridiculous. I  _like_ the gloves.” Julan was wearing his, and had been since he got them.  
  
Iriel regarded him with an indulgent smirk. “You really do, don’t you? It’s right up your street isn’t it, all this romantic nonsense about noble thieves, stealing from the bad, giving to the good, righting wrongs.”  
  
“Why’s it nonsense to right wrongs?”  
  
“I’m not saying anything against the principle of it.” Iriel made a disclamatory gesture, leaning against the canton wall. “I just don’t see why we have to wear gloves.”  
  
He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the sunlight on his skin. After the endless underground passages, it felt so restorative he could almost believe himself capable of photosynthesis.  _I used to think I hated being outside. Then I went to jail._

“Because the gloves are a sign of who we are!” Julan was saying. “Bal Molagmer, stone fire men! Carrying burning stones down the volcano!”  
  
“Yeeeees,” said Ire. “About that. I didn’t quite follow that part, to be honest. Why were they taking burning stones from a mountain, exactly? Was there a serious shortage of flaming rocks elsewhere? Personally, I have no intention of going anywhere near Red Mountain ever again, least of all to rearrange the fucking masonry.”  
  
“That’s not the point! It’s a secret identity! It’s like something out of a story. You know when Jobasha asked me about Argonians, and I said I’d read books? One book was called The Ebon Crest. It was about an Argonian man called Erzeel who was a plantation slave by day, but who fought against slavery by night, disguised in a black mask. He would sneak out, and release others, undermine the masters, take dangerous risks–”  
  
“And lock himself up again by morning? How very co-operative of him.”  
  
“He was a hero! He couldn’t abandon his fellow slaves. He needed to live their lives, share their suffering! How could he act for them, if he didn’t understand what they endured?”  
  
“If I were a slave, I’d take whatever rescuer I could get, but ideally the one with the best access to resources, rather then the one with the perfect moral ideology.”  
  
“That’s not as good a story, though.”  
  
“Fine, but if you think I’d go back to jail so I could break people out with more narrative impact, you can think a-fucking-gain. I don’t care how pretty my gloves are.” Ire caught hold of one of Julan’s hands and peered at it. “Do you think the Gentleman sewed all these little Daedric letters onto them them himself?”  
  
Julan laughed. “I bet he got Crazy Legs to do it.”  
  
“Yes, probably. They’re quite a pair, aren’t they?”  
  
“Do you think they are? A…  _pair?_ ”  
  
Ire snorted. “How should I know? There isn’t a secret sign for it, like there is for the Guild.” He stopped. “Actually, there probably is, but I don’t know it. All my information about gay culture is from Syonilis’ awful books, and is both decades out of date and based exclusively on the Alinor court scene. There was a very complicated code involving the number and direction of the pleats in your kinsash. Which is not something anyone below landowning caste wears, and even then, no one under the age of a hundred, nowadays. When I read about this, I thought, oh, apparently I’m too common to be gay properly. Unless I’m supposed to rearrange the pleats in my filthy smock. Or just smear IM GAY on it in mud. Anyway, there might be a less ridiculous modern local variant. I should find out.”  _Oh look, another research project.  
  
_ “Why’d you want to know?” Julan’s suspicious face was back, and Ire groaned. “Seriously? Why wouldn’t I?”  
  
“Well… you’re with me now, you don’t need to… go looking.”  
  
“ _Seriously?!_ ” Ire swatted Julan with his own gloved hand. “I’m not  _going looking_ , for fuck’s sake. It’s nice to know who else is around, that’s all. I might have nothing further in common with them, but at least I know I don’t have to hide it. And… look, it’s like when you met that Ashlander in Pelagiad. Sometimes it’s good to talk to people who speak the same language.”  
  
“Unlike me, then.”  
  
“I didn’t mean… I…” Ire’s voice staggered to a halt, as the implications of own his words registered. “You never talk about it,” he said, eventually. “You listen to me rant on about my issues, my exes, all the rest of it, but you never contribute much. I assumed you didn’t feel comfortable talking about it.”  
  
“I… don’t.”  
  
“Then–”  
  
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t  _want_ to talk, I’m just not… it’s not… you’re right, I don’t speak the language of it, the way you do. I’m not even sure I think of all that stuff in the same ways. I worry I’ll…” He rubbed his neck and looked at Ire, uncertain. “You could ask me things. If you wanted. You’ve never really asked.”  
  
“I suppose not."  _Because I was scared I might not like the answers. I was reluctant to hold this unstable experiment between us up to the light, in case the reaction wasn’t what I’d hoped for at all. Or I ruined it, by disturbing the delicate balance too soon, and it all ends up down the drain, and I’m left wondering whether my mistake was turning the heat up too high, not high enough, or… or… using too many terrible extended metaphors, Iriel._ "Do you want me to ask, then?”  
  
“Maybe. Yeah. Later, though.” Julan stretched, and cracked his knuckles, still admiring his gloves. “We’re headed for the Arena, then? I’m starving. You think there’ll be food there?”  
  
“Yes, probably something fried beyond all possibility of identification.” He squinted at the sun: high and noonish, though doing little to dispel the chill in the air. Rain was on the way, he could feel it in his coastal upbringing. “Fine. But let’s find Addhiranirr first. And take your gloves off, you’ll get grease in all that beautiful embroidery, and Crazy Legs will cry.”  
  
  
The Gentleman listed Addhiranirr among his local Thieves’ Guild agents, and had furnished them with the Khajiiti woman’s last known whereabouts. His tone had indicated the Gentleman was partly doing this for his own benefit: he was worried.  
  
“She was hiding out in the St Olms underworks until recently,” the Redguard had said, finally reminding Iriel of the brief encounter that had set him on a collision course with Tsiya and her sugar. “But I’m told she’s been seen in the Arena. Acting oddly. She ran away when her brother thieves tried to speak with her. The Arena is large, and full of strange boltholes, but I wish you luck in finding her. Tell her the Gentleman sends his regards.”  
  



	92. catch

“Hey! You can’t go in there!” The Arena employee sprinted towards them as they approached the entrance to the balcony seating area. “Didn’t you see the notice outside? We’re closed! The Temple are conducting an emergency procedure!”   
  
Iriel paused, hand on the door. “An emergency  _what_ , exactly?”  
  
The Dunmer man looked terrified. “There’s a corprus victim in there, sera! The Temple have come to get rid of her, before she infects us all!” He wrung his hands. “By the Three, it’s probably too late. I don’t get paid enough for this!”  
  
He pushed past them and ran for the exit, leaving Iriel to exchange a uneasy look with Julan, but continue heading inside.

The Arena canton was, like all its square, stone siblings, huge and hollow. Most cantons expressed their hollowness in a thousand, small, tessellating enclosures, like a honeycomb. The Arena, however, was genuinely empty at the core, dominated by a massive circular fighting pit. High walls supported tiers of seats for spectators, and the impossibly immense distance from the floor of the pit to the domed ceiling was strung with brightly coloured flags and pennants, like a spider’s web, by way of a kaleidoscope.  
  
Except that today, something else was - literally - in the air. Today, the vaulted space above the pit was, in addition to its previously mentioned constituents, fractionally more Khajiiti than usual.  
  
She was clinging with all her limbs, swinging wildly, to one of the strings of bunting, more then a hundred feet above the arena floor. Ire could hardly see her, but he could hear a shrill, desperate yowling curdling through the empty space. He didn’t need to see her face to know it was Addhiranirr. It could only be her, when did the Aurbis ever make his life simple?  
  
He heard voices from below, and, descending the rows of seats, made his way down to look over the barrier into the fighting pit itself.  
  
He had no idea what he was seeing, but they were roughly humanoid, if nightmarish. They had swollen, black heads covered in green spikes. Where their faces should have been were enormous, yellow beaks. Their bodies were undulating masses of black, yellow and green, shapeless and tentlike. Two of them were holding, stretched between them, a small, striped blanket.  
  
The third was the smallest, but was unmistakably in charge. He saw it jam one hand onto what he guessed to be its hip, pointing upwards with the other, stamping a foot into the ground as it did so. He recognised the mannerism instantly, and laughed out loud. Leaving Julan gaping in horror on the balcony, he cast Levitate as he vaulted over the edge, descending to within a few feet of the figures. “Hello Vi,” he grinned.  
  
He could feel the force of her stare even through the slits of the pointed bonemold visor. Then, with a snort of exasperation, Viatrix lifted a black-gauntleted hand, and pushed it aside. Her face appeared, red, shiny and infuriated, although he suspected he was the least of her frustrations. “Iriel?! What are you  _doing_  here? Why aren’t you protected? Did you learn  _nothing_  from Red Mountain? That idiot cat up there is trying to spread corprus to the entire city!”  
  
“That does sound awkward,” he said. “So you’re trying to… what, exactly? I’m intrigued to hear your plan of action.” Up close, he saw that the green attachments on her strange costume were bunches of herbs, and the interior of her beak-like visor was stuffed with them. “I see you’ve traded in your fancy dresses, at last. What’s that you’ve got there, chokeweed? Willow anther? I wasn’t aware of any research ascribing corprus-preventing properties to… anything you’re wearing, actually. Does looking ridiculous make you feel closer to your gods, perhaps?”  
  
“You are still so _unbelievably_  rude,” she groaned, but there wasn’t much force in her words, and her shoulders sagged. “Unfortunately, you’re also right. We only  _hope_  this might help to prevent transmission. And I’m at a loss as to how we’re going to get her down. These lackwits,” she indicated her two colleagues with an indignant gesture, “scared her witless trying to corner her, and she started climbing.”  
  
They squinted upwards, to where Addhiranirr, quieter now, swung sadly back and forth, a distant scrap of pathetic fur. “I could levitate up,” offered Iriel, dubiously.  
  
Viatrix scoffed. “And do what? Get a rope around her? Put her in a basket? Nobody can get close, she bites and scratches. There’s no talking to her, either - corprus destroys mental function. She’s completely irrational, not to mention contagious.”  
  
Iriel stared at Viatrix’s colleagues, holding the blanket. “So you’re just waiting for her to fall? That’s horrible. And you’re not even standing in the right place to catch her!”  
  
“Weeeeeell,” said one, in a sing-song Dunmeri  voice like a flute full of sand, “we were raaaaather thinking it’d be simplest  _not_ to catch her.”

“What?!” Ire glared at Viatrix, who for her part, turned furious eyes on the Dunmer. “I have authorised no such thing,” she said. “It’s our holy duty to do all we can for her.”  
  
“Duty? Cruelty’s what it is!” The other man spoke now, Dunmer again, but gruffer, with an accent Iriel didn’t recognise. “That cat’s scuttled either way! There’s no cure for corprus! If it were me up there, I’d take a swift drop and a broken neck before I’d go to the Corprusarium to get sliced up by the Telvanni!”  
  
“That is  _not_ your decision!” Viatrix stamped her foot again. “We have our instructions, and we will–”  
  
She was interrupted by a harrowing yowl, and all eyes turned upwards. Addhiranirr had slipped, and was hanging by her tail and one hand, claws barely hooked around the loop of rope. Her other limbs flailed wildly, and she continued to make sounds that would curdle milk.  
  
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Iriel shrugged his bag to the floor, and spread his hands to cast.  
  
“What are you going to do?” demanded Viatrix.  
  
“Something!” he snapped, as he began to rise into the air.  
  
  



	93. force

Iriel had studied Alteration. Had, at one point, thought he might specialise in it. It had sounded so impressive, when he first attended lectures at the Crystal Tower: change the world! Bend the physical realm to your will - sorry - your Will! Then he had attended classes, and spent months learning about counter-aetheric force (the academic term for what ordinary people, who didn’t understand these things, called gravity) and formulas to calculate water pressure and wind resistance. Altmeri magical tradition demanded that students first master the theory. You had to learn the rules before you could break them. He might be allowed to actually  _alter_ things in a few years, if he studied hard and passed the exams.

Things were different when he transferred to Cyrodiil. There, the Professor of Alteration was a steely-eyed Imperial known to students as The Cliff, due to her threats to throw students off one, if their problems with levitation persisted. Necessity focused the mind, she said. Alteration was all about willpower and belief. She didn’t hold with teaching the physics of it. You are a mage, she would roar. You make your own physics! Your mind will do battle with the Aurbis, and if you are worthy, the Aurbis will bow before you!  
  
She was rumoured to be working on a transmutation spell that would change lesser substances into gold. They said she spent her nights concentrating on a rock on her desk, glaring the resistance out of it, molecule by molecule. When she looked at him, Iriel could believe it. But, struggling to levitate a feather on his own desk, he hadn’t felt that engaging the universe in mental combat was ever going to be his forte. It was so much bigger, and more experienced than he was, so much more self-assured. There were thousands of years of inertia behind its processes, grinding like endless Dwemer machinery. His will, even capitalised, was too weak a spanner to jam into those works. A minor blip in the rhythm, at most, and it’d be crushed as the gears churned on.  
  
He’d found himself returning to the equations he’d been forced to memorise at the Tower. He’d discovered, to his chagrin, that the Sapiarchs had been on to something, at least to his Altmeri-educated mind. If you wanted to change something, it helped to understand the thing you were trying to change. Staring at the feather, he had realised he didn’t need to do battle with the entire Aurbis, he only needed to fight the air immediately around the object he wanted to move, convince it that local relative masses were very slightly different. The Cliff had been right about one thing: it was about belief. And Iriel found it considerably easier to believe things if he could construct a veneer of logical process, however flimsy.  
  
He’d balanced the feather on his finger. It barely weighed anything. Using the standard formula, it couldn’t be constrained by more than a quell of counter-aetheric force. He had repeated the incantation, but instead of trying to command physics as a whole, he’d merely suggested a minor adjustment to the relative densities of feathers and air, just within these few square inches.  
  
The feather had shot upwards and lodged an inch into the plaster of the ceiling. He’d blinked, brushed the dust from his hair, and began recalculating the ratio. An hour later, he’d floated up to retrieve it himself.  
  
Iriel liked levitation, was comfortable with heights.  _It’s really not that I enjoy looking down on others in a metaphorical sense,_ he occasionally attempted to convince people, including himself.  _Purely in a literal one, because it means I know where they are, and exactly how close they can get to me.  
_  
Right now, Viatrix and company were small black blobs far below him, and Julan was a distant smudge on the balcony. Ire couldn’t see his face, but faint choking noises gave a clue as to his expression.  _Honestly, people make such a fuss about levitation. It’s perfectly safe if you have confidence in what you’re doing. Faith, if you prefer,_  he added, glancing down at Viatrix.  
  
How close he ought to get to Addhiranirr, he wasn’t sure. He was ready to cast Levitate on her, if she seemed about to fall, but experience with Julan had taught him that seeking permission for these things was advisable. He didn’t want her shooting upwards into the dome in blind panic. Currently, she had regained her grip around the bunting with all five limbs, and seemed stable, curled into a ball, face buried in her arms.  
  
He floated closer. “Excuse me? Addhiranirr?”  
  
Her head twisted towards his voice, and she opened wide, terrified green eyes. “Noooo!” she yowled. “Khajiit will not be caught! Go away!” She tried to scrabble away from him along the rope, but gravity (or, if you prefer, counter-aetheric force) prevailed, and she slid back down again.  
  
“I’m not trying to catch you,” he said. “I want to help you.”  
  
A sound emerged from the depths of her throat. It was the most concentrated expression of despair that Iriel had ever heard, and he considered himself experienced. “No help for Khajiit. Khajiit has corprus!”  
  
He floated a little closer, the same height as she was, now, and around twenty feet away. He squinted at her. She was obviously frightened beyond all reason, but her eyes lacked the vacant madness he’d seen in those of the St Delyn cultist. And while it was hard to tell under fur, he couldn’t see the weeping sores, or swollen growths he’d seen on the other corprus victims he’d encountered, either in the underworks or on Red Mountain. “What makes you think you have corprus?” he asked.  
  
“Addhiranirr was in the underworks! She saw them, the walkers, the dead ones! She… she took coin from its pocket! And then she is sick, so sick! And now she is dying, but she will not be taken, never taken!”  
  
“I promise, I’m not going to touch you without your permission, and I’m not with the Temple. The Gentleman sent me. He’s worried about you. You’re sick? Sick in what way?”  
  
She stared at him, breathing heavily. He could hear congestion in her lungs, and her nostrils were crusted, but that was all. “Addhiranirr,” she whimpered, “she… she didn’t want to hurt her friends. She came here to hide, to die. She tells people to stay away, shouts that she has corprus. But they find her, and drive her out, and she is so frightened.”  
  
“Addhiranirr, I’m not a healer, but I don’t think you  _have_ corprus. I’ve seen people with corprus. I think you have a bad cold, from hiding down in the sewers for weeks. Please, will you let me cast Levitate on you, and bring you down safely?”  
  
He watched her expression, as she processed his words. She gave a choking sob. Then, suddenly, before he could move a muscle to cast, she leaped at him. He had no idea how she did it, how she generated enough force from four limbs on a length of rope to launch herself across the space between them, but she did. She hit him like a sandbag, wrapping her arms and legs around his body, claws extending deeply into his flesh as the force sent him hurtling backwards.  
  
Iriel always calculated his levitation ratios precisely. Anything else was a waste of magicka. He had enough lift to support himself, and no more. He’d also been on the point of recasting the spell before it expired. They fell slowly at first, and then, as the residual magic faded, considerably faster.  
  
Addhiranirr realised her mistake quickly, but reacted to Iriel’s struggles to free his hands by clinging ever tighter around him, instinct making her twist him beneath her, as they plummeted, in a cacophonous screaming duet, towards the ground.  
  



	94. enough

Everything was screaming and receding strands of colour, until it wasn’t. Until his back slammed into the ground, forcing the air out of him, and for a moment, he lost everything: the light, the shouts, the claws of the traumatised Khajiit digging into his flesh. Then it all avalanched back onto him, and he was there on the Arena floor, coughing and wheezing, wincing as they pulled Addhiranirr off him, wondering how in blighted Oblivion he wasn’t dead.

Viatrix’ face came into focus above him, looking extremely shaken. “Are you trying,” she said, “to give me a heart attack?”  
  
“I’m fine,” he croaked. “Thanks for asking.” He thought he was being sarcastic, but, sitting up, he found that, aches and imminent bruising aside, it was broadly true.  
  
“It’s Brals and Lethys you should be thanking,” she said. “Praise the Three, but they actually caught you.”  
  
He looked down, and found the remains of the torn blanket around him. “They caught me? You’re sure?”  
  
“Well, mostly. Enough. You’re alive to complain about it, aren’t you?”  
  
“IRE!!” Irregular, limping footfalls approached from behind, and then Julan collapsed beside him, gasping for breath. He had a graze on his chin. “Are you… hhh… are you…?”  
  
“I’m all right.”  
  
“Hhhhh… oh… good. Sorry, I… hhh… running to the pit and I… hhh… fell down the stairs.”  
  
The next hour provided some restoration and resolution. Viatrix’ men stopped smothering Addhiranirr under a herb-impregnated oilskin long enough to confirm that whatever she had, it wasn’t corprus. Iriel, smugly vindicated in his alchemical preparations, produced potions from his bag: a curative tonic for Addhiranirr, and healing potions for himself and Julan. The latter, after his sympathetic encounter with a staircase, turned out to need them more than Iriel.  
  
Addhiranirr was understandably anxious to vanish back into the woodwork. Still, she was grateful enough to answer Iriel’s questions between sips of potion, shifting from paw to paw, one eye always on the nearest exit.  
  
“Why does Caius ask this one about a Nerevarine?” she rasped. “You tell Caius nobody in her right mind pays any attention to this moon-yeowling. Prophecies and ancient heroes reborn and other silliness. Fuzzy tales for little kitties. Some people do not need sugar to live in fantasy land. But Sixth House? Addhiranirr can tell you something, perhaps. Not much, not nearly enough to give you in exchange for her life, but all she has.”  
  
Iriel would have told her that nothing he’d done amounted to saving her life, but if he did, she might jack up the price of her information, so he held his tongue.  
  
“Addhiranirr knows all about smuggling. Usually, she always knows who is moving what to where. You once asked her about buying sugar, correct? Oh yes, kitten, Addhiranirr remembers everybody. But do you recall that she could not help you very much, because nobody was bringing sugar into Vivec any more? Sixth House is why. Nearly all the Bitter Coast smugglers who once brought the sugar have been bought up by this Sixth House. But nobody knows what they are smuggling, not even long-whiskered Addhiranirr. And this is odd, because these smugglers are always loud and bragging, and now they hush up like fat-bellied kitties full of sweet-meats. Whoever is this Sixth House, they are paying verrrrry well, or being verrrry frightening. Perhaps both.”  
  
She finished her potion, and, to Ire’s annoyance, pocketed his empty flask. Still, he thanked her, and let her disappear.  
  
Afterwards, he sat in the rows of stone seating, catching up with Viatrix.  
  
“You look good,” she said. “Your eyes are clearer, your cheeks less hollow. I think I even saw you smile, or was I dreaming?”  
  
He confirmed her suspicions. “Thanks, I’m doing much better than I was. You remember Julan, don’t you?”  
  
She took a closer look at the Dunmer on Iriel’s far side. He waggled his eyebrows at her, but didn’t interrupt his rapid ingestion of curried kwama on a stick.  
  
Viatrix gaped.“ _He’s_  that jittery heap of bloodstained bugshell you picked up at Ghostgate? Well I never. He cleans up nicely, I must say. I barely recognised either of you!”  
  
She smoothed back the tendrils of dark hair escaping from her bun, mangled by the bonemould helm. “I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your letter. Things have been so complicated here. Not that I expected it to be easy!” - he heard the familiar defensiveness creeping into her voice - “But you have no idea what a mess this city is in right now. When I arrived, I never expected to be in this position. I’m an Imperial, I knew I could never be a full Priestess. I was happy to serve, in any way I was needed. And I still don’t have an official post, but nobody wants to deal with corprus victims, so now I have Ordinators under my command! It’s completely chaotic. It’s not just me, everyone says it’s getting worse.”  
  
“What, exactly, is getting worse? The Temple?”  
  
“We’re the only ones trying to  _do_ anything!” Her eyes flashed, as she hovered on the point of anger, then evidently remembered her Grace of Courtesy. “Forgive me. But everyone likes to blame the Temple, tell us the Ordinators are out of control, that we’re arresting too many people, that all dissenting opinion is being suppressed. And then, in the very same breath, they complain that cultists are running wild, there are more and more cases of corprus, the Blight is worsening and the Ghostfence is failing! Which do they want, action or inaction?!”  
  
Iriel sucked his teeth. “Sounds like you’re out of your depth. Isn’t the whole point of having living gods that they can fix this sort of thing for you?”  
  
She looked uncomfortable. “I can’t discuss the inner workings of the Temple.”  
  
He leaned forwards, intrigued. “Have you even seen him? Vivec, I mean? Is that something you get to do? Or is his presence to be taken on faith, too? Exactly how much weight can your faith support, Vi?”  
  
“My faith can bear anything!” She bore down on him mercilessly with her glare and flattened him. “Anything. And I  _have_ had the honour of meeting the divine Vivec. Only once, but… it was enough. After my pilgrimage, when I was formally initiated. I  _really_  can’t talk about it.” She looked down at her lap, sudden colour rising to her cheeks, luminous above her black clothing.  
  
Iriel boggled at her changed demeanour. “What was he like?”  
  
Viatrix smiled wistfully at her clasped hands. “She was  _beautiful_.”  
  
There was a short break in the conversation, as Julan chose that particular moment to nearly choke to death on a mouthful of kwama. When Iriel had finished banging him on the back, he felt it prudent to steer the conversation back into what he hoped were safer waters. “Do you know anyone named Mehra Milo?” he asked.  
  
Viatrix blinked, surprised. “Yes, she works in the library at the Hall of Wisdom. She’s very quiet, I’ve barely spoken to her. Although I did hear some of the Ordinators say–” She stopped, and compressed her lips into a small, suspicious rosebud. “What do you want with her?”  
  
Something in her tone made Ire begin to sweat. “Nothing! I don’t want anything! At least, not for anyone to get into trouble, Vi, you, her or anyone! I need to talk to her, but it’s nothing for anyone to get suspicious about, I swear!”  
  
“Oh, Iriel.” She gave him a pitying look. “That was the least convincing thing I’ve ever heard. Thank Almsivi you’re so insignificant, because you wouldn’t last a minute under real questioning by Ordinators.”  
  
She sighed. “Saints, but it feels like everyone’s under suspicion, these days. I hate it. Sometimes I wonder if being Imperial is a blessing, because even if some are convinced I must be a spy for the Empire, at least no one thinks I’m in league with the Dissident Priests. A spy might get a clean death, exile if I was lucky, or my father intervened. Heretics get the Ministry of Truth. I understand the necessity of such things, but…”  
  
She broke off, and smiled a tight, unconvincing smile. “I really must be going. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you asked me about Mehra. Do be careful, though.” He watched her march away with perfect poise, carrying off her plague-tent like a silk ball-gown.  
  
  
“D'you know what the Ebon Crest would have done?” Julan was leaning back on his elbows, gazing up into the tangle of flags and pennants in the dome.  
  
Iriel was straightening his spine, convinced at least one vertebra must be on the verge of dislocation. “Astonishingly,” he said, “I do not. From your tone, I expect this to change, shortly.”  
  
Julan pointed upwards. “He’d have stood on the edge of the balcony and cut the end of that flagrope there. Then he’d have used it to swing out into space, and catch you in mid-air as you fell.”  
  
“You didn’t feel like trying it?”  
  
“Malacath, no! I’m not that stupid.”  
  
“Ohhh, I see. Pretending you’re a legendary hero and trying to kill an evil demigod single-handed? Perfectly safe. Rope swinging, though? Ooh, no, that sounds hazardous. Could get a nasty burn. …I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Iriel, apologies only work if you’ve stopped laughing.”  
  
“……………Sorry.”  
  
“No, you’re not.” Julan stood up. “Come on, let’s get this blighted business at the Temple over with, so we can finally go home. No doubt this library priestess or whatever she is can tell us all about the Nerevarine cult. I mean, the Temple would know. They’ve tortured more information out of its members than anyone!”   
  
Iriel peered apprehensively at him through his hair. “Promise me you’ll behave yourself? No insults. No arguments. For Mara’s sweet sake, no stabbing. Be nice.”  
  
Julan looked affronted. “Of course!” he said. “I’m  _very_ nice. When I want to be.”

 


	95. want

Something was stuck in Iriel’s throat. He felt it there, as they walked out of the library. It was made out of paralysing shame, and it made it difficult to breathe, but easier to remain silent.  
  
It remained firmly lodged there as they navigated the winding corridors of the Hall of Wisdom, successfully holding down the roiling nausea in his stomach threatening to take verbal form. The agonising knowledge that he’d been mistaken, the humiliating realisation that, yet again, he had allowed himself to hope that things were a certain way, when they were, in fact, not.  
  
If he let it explode over everything, it would be embarrassing and disastrous, he knew, just as he knew that he was going to do it anyway. He made it into the Temple district. He made it onto the bridge to St Delyn. Then things started to break down.

“So, Jobasha’s?” Julan was leading, shouldering his way through a tide of pious Dunmer heading towards High Fane for the early evening devotions. “I’m guessing you’d prefer to buy it, rather than try for the Hall of Justice copy and risk the wrath of the Ordinators again. Unless you want to get food, first. I’m so hungry, I could eat a rat.”  
  
“Why are you with me?” Iriel was scarcely audible over the crowd, but his tone made Julan grind to a halt in the middle of the bridge. Several people were forced to swerve around him, muttering and cursing.  
  
“What?” He turned back to Ire, who was standing immobile, hands clenched at his sides. “I’m… helping you look for a book? ‘Progress of Truth’. The one Mehra recommended we find for Cosades. Aren’t I?”  
  
“I don’t understand. Why be with me and not a girl?”  
  
Julan looked utterly baffled. “What girl?” A Dunmer matron in her best shawl collided with his shoulder, and harrumphed at him.  
  
“Any girl!”  
  
“I could be with any girl? Not in my experience. Maybe you should tell the girls that, not me.” The twitch in Ire’s eyelid informed him that attempting to joke his way out of this was akin to kicking a wasps’ nest. He exhaled. “What in Oblivion are you on about?”  
  
“You like women!”  
  
“That’s… that shouldn’t be news to you. Look, do you really want to have this conversation here?”

Julan dragged Ire to the side of the bridge. Elbow against the stone parapet, he rubbed his forehead. Iriel’s face was a crime scene, making him the baffled detective grasping for clues. “Is this because I said I admired Mehra Milo?”  
  
“You didn’t have to say anything! You were… you were staring at her like… like you wanted to crawl into those enormous copper-coloured eyes of hers, build a fucking nest and lay eggs in them!”  
  
“OK… firstly… like I wanted to  _what?!_  Secondly, her eyes were exactly the same colour as yours, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about if I liked them. And sec– thirdly, I was talking to her! You know, holding a conversation! You’re meant to look at people when you do that, not that you’d know anything about talking to people normally, which is–” he bulldozed through Iriel’s outraged attempts to interject, “–exactly why I was doing it! I was trying to help!”  
  
“Oh, you were trying to help, how  _convenient!_  Do you seriously deny that you found her extremely attractive?”  
  
“All right, fine, she was very beautiful, but–”  
  
“Right! And what would you say, if I told you that she also found you attractive, and wanted to see more of you?”  
  
“She… she  _what?_  Is that true?!”  
  
“No! Don’t be so fucking ridiculous! Anyway, from the way she talked about him, she obviously has something going on with Caius Cosades.”  
  
“WHAT?! With that disgusting old sugar-tooth?”  
  
“JULAN THAT IS REALLY NOT THE FUCKING POINT HERE!!!”  
  
“WELL, WHAT  _IS_  THE FUCKING POINT HERE?!” More and more people were throwing them dirty looks as they passed.  
  
“All right. Let me be completely clear,” Iriel said, trying to wrestle his voice into a clipped monotone, but losing his grip on it every other word. “This is not about jealousy. I simply don’t understand why you would want to be with me, and put up with all the hateful shit people are going to throw at you because of it, and all the neurotic shit I am going to throw at you because of it… when you could choose to be with a woman instead.”  
  
“Wh…”  
  
“You obviously  _prefer_  women! Isn’t it only a matter of time before you meet one you’d rather be with than me? Am I just punishing myself by pretending that this is going to last, when it so clearly isn’t something you’re genuinely inclined to–”  
  
“DO YOU WANT ME TO TEAR YOUR CLOTHES OFF RIGHT HERE? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?”  
  
“I DON’T KNOW, DO  _YOU_  WANT TO?”  
  
Julan looked as if what he really wanted to do was to throw Iriel off the bridge. “There’s no answer to that question I can give that you won’t get mad about,” he said.  
  
An ashy cough made him glance sideways. An old man was glaring crimson at them from under a netch-leather skullcap. He spat onto the ground, before hobbling off.  
  
Julan ground his knuckles into his brow. “Can we  _please_  go somewhere else?”  
  
  
They found a woman selling spiced ash-yam pasties from a cart. The pasties were triangular, and she had pricked the initials of Almsivi into them. This, in her view, made them holy Tribunal pasties, and worthy of twice the normal price. Julan would have haggled, but Ire refused to let him, pushing the money into the vendor’s hand with an exhausted expression. They ate them back over by the Temple, on a bench near a statue of Vivec stabbing a giant shalk with his enormous spear. The sun had almost set, and the looming shadow of the Ministry of Truth made it darker still.  
  
“You finish it,” muttered Iriel, passing his quarter-eaten pasty to Julan. “It’s much too spicy.”  
  
“Oh come on, it’s hardly spicy at all!”  
  
“Don’t you fucking tell me it’s not spicy when that is a completely subjective opinion, and you have no control over how I experience it. When I say that to me, it’s too spicy, it is literally not possible for me to be wrong, because I know how it makes me feel, and you do not! So don’t sit there, policing my fucking reactions, simply because things that don’t affect you at all affect me differently, because th… there is nothing I can d… do about it.”  
  
“Are you… crying?”  
  
“YES.”  
  
Julan looked at him oddly. “She must’ve given you a far spicier one than me, then.” He took the pasty out of Ire’s hand and sniffed it dubiously. Iriel made a disgusted noise and turned away.  
  
“I don’t know what I can say to convince you,” said Julan, after a while. “I don’t think I’m choosing anything. I didn’t choose to feel this way about you. For what it’s worth… you’re not the first. I just always brushed it off as admiration, or that I wanted to  _be_ him, or… whatever made it so I didn’t have to think about it too hard, I guess. And for a long time with you, I thought… well, what you said. That I didn’t  _really_ want anything to happen, because it would be too weird and difficult, and I couldn’t get my head round it. But I couldn’t keep ignoring it. I cared about you more than I cared about any of that other stuff. Doesn’t that prove anything?”

“Only that you’re bad at cost-benefit analysis,” said Ire, but in somewhat mollified tones. “I still think you could do better.”  
  
“So could you! I keep screwing up - upsetting you all the time, and failing to protect you! I figured out what I should have done differently in the Black Shalk, you know. Too late, but I did.”  
  
“Did you?”  
  
“Yeah. I should have moved in front of you, so that n'wah would hit me with the bottle instead.”  
  
“That would have been better than it hitting me, would it?”  
  
“Right!”  
  
“I see. And is that what the Ebon Crest would have done?”  
  
“Azura’s star, no. He’d have jumped on a table, done something fancy with throwing daggers bouncing off the ceiling, disabled everyone without bloodshed and spirited you away to safety in his arms.”  
  
“He sounds quite the charmer, do you have his address? Oh don’t make that face, I’m not serious. I mean, he’s a fictional character. Agh, stoppit, I was  _joking_ , if you push me off this bench, I’m taking you with me.” He locked his arm around Julan’s. “I really am joking. I don’t want a hero for a boyfriend, I want you.”  
  
Julan looked as though he were literally chewing on his thoughts, jaw shifting as he stared into the middle-distance. Finally he said, “What does that mean, though?”  
  
“What does what mean?”  
  
“Me. I need to be a hero. Heroes change things, but I’m no good at it. Throwing myself in front of things is all I know, and I can’t even get that right, half the time. But what else is there? If I’m not this, I’m not anything.”  
  
Ire nudged him. “Don’t be so silly! You could be lots of things. You  _are_ lots of things. Stop defining yourself by this ridiculous costume your mother is trying to dress you up in! What do  _you_ want?”  
  
“It’s not  _about_ what I want! I told you! I shouldn’t even be in a relationship, you heard what happened with Shani.”  
  
“Oh, so you’d drop  _me_ , if your ma told you to?”  
  
“No! I think… maybe she was wrong. About it being a distraction, always. You’ve helped me become stronger. And I need that, because I  _do_ want to change things. Make them better, if I can.”  
  
He exhaled, and looked back at Ire. Grinned. “And… whether I should or not… right now, I want you. Not Mehra Milo, or any of the other million pretty girls out there. Even if they’d have me.”  
  
Ire snuggled closer. “So… when you say you want me… do you mean…” he slid an experimental hand along Julan’s thigh, “want, or…  _want_?” Julan’s muscles tensed, and he shifted position. Ire caught the same panicked flash he’d seen in Julan’s eyes, every other time they’d had any opportunity to nudge matters in this direction. He swiftly removed his hand. “I see. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”   
  
“No! no no no, don’t… don’t get the wrong idea!” Ire’s hand was grabbed, held, squeezed agitatedly. “I do,  _definitely_ , want, I just… gods, this is so embarrassing… I’m scared I’ll have no idea what I’m doing. And… then when it’s bad, you’ll take it as proof I don’t like you enough!”  
  
Iriel began laughing softly in the darkness. “Auri-El, what do you think’s going to happen? That I’ll have a scorecard, and be assigning points? Please leave all notes and alchemical aids outside the exam bedroom, you now have one hour to produce an orgasm. You may turn your partners over… now! Sorry,” he added, at Julan’s blank expression. “Formal education joke.”  
  
He smiled, and twined his fingers through Julan’s. “It’ll be fine. Really. We can take things as slow as you want, but please don’t worry. I don’t have a blueprint for how sex is supposed to go, that’s part of the fun. I’m not saying I don’t have ideas, but… it depends what we both want to do. Nothing is mandatory. And if I did have a scorecard, I’d definitely assign more points for enthusiasm then experience.”  
  
“How many points for sock cucking?”  
  
“How many points for stealing Vivec’s spear off that statue and gutting you like a beetle?!”  
  
“Maybe lots. Maybe I’m into that.”

  
The sun had set, and a small Bosmer woman with a crooked nose and a fire spell had come past, lighting the street lamps. The worshippers filed past out of the Temple service, sending barbed glances to where they sat, visibly entangled, on the bench.  
  
“Jobasha’s will be closed by now.” Julan said. “I guess we can’t get that book til tomorrow.”  
  
“We’re not going to Jobasha’s.” Iriel’s voice was higher than usual, spiked with excitement. He leaned close and whispered into Julan’s ear. “Put your best gloves on, sweetheart. We’re going to steal from people who deserve it!”


	96. interference

Iriel trod softly along the passageway, shielding the flame of his stolen candle. It was hardly the most valuable or dangerous thing he’d ever taken, but right now, it felt like it. Dangerous because of the consequences if he were caught, and valuable because if he allowed it to go out, he would be completely screwed.

He was in the deepest vaults of the Hall of Justice, in the bowels of the Temple. Getting in had taken quite some doing. The heretical book he was after was kept under heavy guard, and he was already regretting his cavalier decision to steal it, but he’d come too far to turn back now. There was another crash from the floor above.  _Oh gods. What is he doing up there?_  
  
There had been a fully armoured Ordinator at the entrance to the vault, and several more patrolling the corridors. “I’ll distract them,” Julan had whispered. “You get in and find the book. I’ll catch up when I can.”  
  
“Don’t be absurd! They’ll kill you!”  
  
“They won’t  _see_  me. That’s the whole point of a diversion. It’s like hunting - you make them look somewhere you’re not, and then while they’re distracted, you strike.”  
  
“Don’t you dare get into fights with Ordinators!”  
  
“Relax. I’ll skip the striking part.” He had grinned, silenced Ire’s protests with a kiss and melted into the shadows.  
  
A few minutes later, the jangle of multiple metal somethings spilling onto a stone floor had sent the guard jogging and muttering off down a passageway. Iriel, swallowing his dread, had tiptoed invisibly over to the reinforced doorway. And cursed, because it was magically warded, and his spells could do nothing to it. He could still feel Helende smirking at him, across the miles, for neglecting his lockpicking training. Fortunately for Ire, the guard had left the key on the table in his hurry. Ire had swiftly unlocked the door and repositioned the key.  
  
Opening the door had revealed an unfathomable darkness. He’d blinked, and recast his Night Eye spell, but it changed nothing. Then he’d seen the glyph on the wall: all magicka neutralised beyond this point.  _Fuck me all the way to Akavir with a rusty boathook!!_  
  
Heavy footsteps returning along the corridor, he’d scanned the table desperately: a candle in a protective glass holder. They’d notice if he took it, though. About to give up and retreat, he’d spotted the box of extra candles on the floor. With seconds to spare, he’d grabbed one, summoned a flame to light it and hurled himself through the doorway, closing it behind him as silently as he could.  
  
Scuttling through a maze of downward sloping passageways, hot wax ran over his fingers, and dripped into the dust. He wondered how much time those inches of candle represented, and what would happen when they ran out. How long until he screamed, and chose the tender mercies of the Ordinators over being trapped alone in an unknown darkness?  _Never let it be said that my appetite for knowledge is insatiable: there are things I’d rather not find out._  
  
He felt the atmosphere subtly change around him as the passage opened into a larger space. The rays of his candle began falling on shelf after shelf, arrayed in parallel lines, and filled with books, papers and scrolls from floor to ceiling. While nothing compared to the magical texts he’d seen at the Tower, he could feel enchantments radiating from some of the tomes. He began to suspect that the magical restrictions were designed to suppress the books, rather than the visitors.  
  
Iriel would be the first to admit that his portfolio of transferable skills was limited. Here, though, was a task he had spent his whole life training for. Pressing his lips together in determination, he raised his candle and began to scan the shelves.  
  
It wasn’t long before he was nestled in a cosy spot between two bookcases, cross-legged next to a pile of potentially interesting texts, including  _Progress of Truth_ , which he had skimread briefly, before getting distracted elsewhere. The half-burned candle, almost forgotten now, was squished into the floor next to him, and his nose was buried in one of the  _36 Lessons of Vivec_.  
  
If challenged, Iriel would have maintained that his ability to lose himself in reading was a survival mechanism, perfected during times he needed to escape, if only mentally, from his current situation. This might explain, although not necessarily excuse, the fact that he had, in addition to the candle, largely forgotten about his original research mission, and whether his boyfriend was still breathing or not.  
  
_“Kagrenac had built… a walking star. …When the soul of the Dwemer could walk no more, they were removed from this world.”_  
  
Ire hadn’t previously considered the Lessons to be much beyond nonsensical light entertainment, but the final one described, albeit in its usual idiosyncratic fashion, the war with the Dwemer. He couldn’t resist getting sucked into his old project again.  
  
_The soul…? Removed by whom? Official Temple writings claim that the Dwemer were destroyed by Nerevar, when he interfered with the Heart of Lorkhan, but that never sounded plausible to me._  
  
He picked up  _Progress of Truth_  again, and reviewed a few paragraphs.  
  
_“Sources in the Apographa suggest that the Tribunal relied on profanely enchanted tools to achieve godhead, and that those unholy devices were the ones originally created by the ungodly Dwemer sorcerer Kagrenac to create the False Construct Numidium… Ashlander tradition holds that the Dwemer destroyed themselves, rather than that Nerevar destroyed them.”_  
  
_Numidium. Chimarvamidium. I need to get back to Baladas, and get that fucking Dwemer book translated! Except that at best, he’d take all the credit, and at worst, get rid of me once I’d brought him what he wanted. I still have to get into Mzuleft, too. I’m so close, but I need more evidence. If I can get that, perhaps I won’t need Telvanni help after all._  
  
“Hey, Iya!”  
  
His heart tried to escape vertically from his body, and he convulsed, dropping the book. He glared bloody murder at Julan, who was skidding along the floor towards him, grinning manically and hiding something behind his back.  
  
“Look what I’ve got!” Ire was presented with a horribly familiar dead-eyed golden stare.  
  
“You  _stole_  an Ordinator’s helm? What were you thinking?!”  
  
“I thought it’d be funny!” Julan was beyond repentance, high on success. “I didn’t kill any of them, I found it in the barracks! They never even saw me, those scuttleheads have barely any vision under these stupid gold pots. They all think they’re going mad, imagining things!”  
  
“Just as long as they don’t come down here,” Iriel huffed. “I’ve found  _Progress of Truth_ , but I need to decide which of these others are important enough to take. We can’t carry all of them.”  
  
“Not with the helm too, no.”  
  
“You are  _not_  keeping that! Do you want to be arrested?!”  
  
“Aww…”  
  
With an exasperated sigh, Ire turned back to his books. A certain passage in  _Progress of Truth_  was nagging at him.  
  
_“The Temple has always maintained a public face and a hidden face. The public account portrays the actions of the Tribunal in a heroic light, while the hidden writings reveal secrets, untruths, inconsistencies, conflicting accounts and varying interpretations which hint at darker and less heroic motives and actions of the Tribunes.”_  
  
While the Tribunal were of limited interest to Iriel, he had a feeling that this duality of public and private doctrine explained a lot of contradictions in Morrowind society that had been confusing him. He thought about the priestess in Balmora, insisting that the homoeroticism in Vivec’s lessons was an allegory, and the Buoyant Armiger at Ghostgate, cheerfully proclaiming that everything involving Lord Vehk was gay.  
  
_Does the Dunmer attitude to sexuality come under this duality, too? Portraying Vi–ghh!!_  
  
His thoughts were becoming subject to increasing amounts of interference from Julan’s wandering hands. “Do you mind?” he hissed, batting one out of his lap yet again.  
  
_Where was I? So… portraying Vivec in a heroic light apparently involves officially denying the queer stuff, and yet, Sermon Fourteen is found in every temple and public library. And whatever else it may, or may not, be an allegory for, Sermon Fourteen is definitely a big Daedric cock-sucking party. At the end of_ _which it_ _says: “This has since become a forbidden ritual, though people still practice it in secret.” Is that condemnation or encouragement? Does–oh, what is he doing now, for fuck’s sake?_  
  
“Are you bored? Do you want something?”  
  
Julan was lying on the floor opposite him, smiling up, hair falling into his face. “No, I’m fine watching you read,” he said, sliding a hand beneath the hem of Ire’s pants and along his calf.  
  
“ _Let_  me read, then!”  
  
“You look so smart and pretty… sorry, not pretty. Handsome?”  
  
“Are you drunk? Did you get into the officers’ liquor cabinet?”  
  
“No! ’m just happy, is all. Looking at you.”  
  
“You’re  _not_  just looking, though, are you? Get out of my pants.”  
  
“Which pants? Don’t forget I’m wearing your pants. You want me to get out of them?”  
  
“No! I’m trying to concentrate.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“…‘Pretty’ is fine, by the way.”  
  
Seeking further Daedric clarification, Ire reached over to the shelf, and retrieved a copy of  _Vivec and Mephala_.  
  
_“…it is important to remember that Vivec is also known to the Dunmer as the transcendent evolution of the daedra that anticipated him, Black Hands Mephala, a foundation figure of the earliest Chimer. This darker side of Vivec does not appear in the popular literature and liturgy, but is instinctively understood and accepted by the Dunmer as an integral part of Vivec’s divine aspect.”_  
  
_Honestly, I’ve never understood the Dunmeri fixation with the Daedra. Why would you choose to associate with, never mind worship, beings of such treachery, instability and savagery? To the point of abandoning your homeland in order to do so. Oh, look, that’s mentioned here, in fact: the origin of the Chimer. I wondered if the Dunmeri version would be less biased than the one I’d been taught, but honestly, it’s still bizarre: “a discontented throng of Altmer transformed themselves into a new people and founded a new land. And while Boethiah, the so-called Prince of Plots, provided the revolutionary methods” –that’s certainly one way of putting ‘ate and shat out a divine ancestor and rubbed everyone’s literal noses in it’– “needed to bring about this transformation, Mephala was the shadowy implementer of those methods…_ _”_  
  
“Can I come read with you?”  
  
“Well–” he began, but Julan was already shuffling around beside him, leaning into his shoulder.  
  
“ _Mephala is the demon of murder, sex, and secrets. All of these themes contain subtle aspects and violent ones (assassination/genocide, courtship/orgy, tact/poetic truths); Mephala is understood paradoxically to contain and integrate these contradictory themes. And all these subtle undercurrents and contradictions are present in the Dunmer concepts of Vivec, even if they are not explicitly described and explained in Temple doctrine. The Dunmer do not… do not…” focus, Ire!_   
  
_“The Dunmer do not envision Lord Vivec as a creature of murder, sex, and secrets. Rather, they conceive of Lord Vivec as benevolent king, guardian warrior, poet-artist. But, at the same time, unconsciously, they accept the notion of darker, hidden currents beneath Vivec’s benevolent aspects.”_  
  
_So, is keeping it in the closet a religious requirement, in this country? Because it certainly seems to me that homosexuality comes under “darker hidden currents”, I mean, of course it fucking does, ugh. Unless they feel the same way about all sex? Sex and secrets, can’t have one without the other, or the thrill’s nnnnnnnnn–_  
  
“Stop that!”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s my fucking neck!”  
  
_“For example, one of the most striking persistent myths associated with Vivec is the story that Vivec conspired with his co-rulers Almalexia and Sotha Sil in the murder of Lord Nerevar, the greatest of Dunmer heroes and generals. The story is derived from Ashhhh– …just ignore him, Ire… Ashlander oral tradition, and is flatly contradicted by all Temple traditions. Nonetheless, the tale is firmly established in the Dunmer imagination, as if to say, "Of course Vivec would never have conspired to murder Lord Nerevar, but it happened so long ago… who can know the truth?”“ fuuuuck, I can’t remember anything I just read._  
  
"Y… You’re not reading it at all.”  _and neither am I, at this point._  
  
_“…the Dunmer seem irrationally comfortable with the hidden aspects of V…”_  
  
“I lied,” a voice growled into his ear, “I don’t want to read, I want you.” Ire lost his place in the text again. “Don’t believe me?” Julan pressed closer, arms around his chest, hands invading his shirt.  
  
“For f… fuck’s sake,” muttered Ire, trying to move the book somewhere he could still see it. “You’re not drunk, you just have no blood whatsoever left in your brain!”  
  
_“…the darker components of violence, lust, and conspiracy associated with the more primitive and ruthless impulses offfffffffffff–”_  
  
“Want you,” came a muffled voice from the nape of his neck, followed by a bite that made him crumple the page he was holding. “Want to prove it to you.”  
  
“You don’t have to prove anything to me!”  
  
“I want to prove it.” Julan’s hand went down the front of Ire’s pants then, and Iriel lost his grip on the book entirely. Soon after, he was flat on his back in the dust, hands in Julan’s hair, trying to stifle small noises into his shoulder. Julan’s borrowed shirt smelled of Khajiiti spices, tomb-wall lichen and his own warm, ash-grey skin. Ire knew he wasn’t going to get any more research done, at least, not via secondary sources. His elbow hit the candle, and it shook, sending their shadows swaying up the bookshelves. “All right,” he gasped, “but not here!”  
  
“You did with Reu.”  
  
“That was different! The most we had to worry about was an irritable librarian! The Ordinators will kill us - or worse!” Panting, he seized Julan by the front of his shirt, forcing him far enough away to make eye contact. “Have you ever been to jail?” he demanded.  
  
A vein was pulsing in Julan’s neck, out of sync with his uneven breathing. “No,” he said.  
  
“Exactly,” hissed Ire. “I have. And let me tell you, until you’ve been in that situation, you have no fucking idea what it’s like. What it can do to you, all the different ways it’s designed to destroy your mind, erode your sense of self.”  
  
He stared at Julan, fists still clenched around his shirt. After a moment, he swallowed, and drew a long breath. “Also, in jail, they will not let me do any of the things I want to do to you right now. Do you want to risk that happening?”   
  
Julan stared back at him. “I… really don’t. Where’s the nearest inn to here?”  
  
“Redoran canton.”  
  
“Get your books.”  
  
  
Escaping unseen through a maze of patrolling Ordinators is difficult, especially when distracted, but not impossible, given the right incentive. (A Telekinesis spell, a Sound spell and a stolen Indoril helm also help considerably.)

 

  
Outside, it was not merely dark, but full-fledged night. Clouds had gathered, blocking out the stars. As they left the High Fane behind them, Ire could feel pinpricks of rain on his face, his neck, the fingers he trailed down Julan’s spine as they turned the corner into St Delyn. Each one felt like a tiny electric charge. He was composed entirely of coruscating energy, barely constrained by skin.  
  
It wasn’t his imagination: the world was becoming shinier. Touched by the raindrops, surfaces began to glisten under the lamps. The streets were quieter now, but far from deserted. So it took him by complete surprise when Julan reached over and took his hand.  
  
Turning, Ire saw a strange expression on his face as he asked, “Would you really change yourself, if you could? Be normal, only ever be attracted to girls?”   
  
“No,” Ire said, immediately. “Which is probably yet another reason I’m  _ab_ normal, but… no.”  
  
“Good.” Julan was grinning dangerously, and threatening to crush his fingers. “Me neither. And I don’t care what any of these blighted assholes say about it! They already call me an ash-eating guarfucker, let them call me a  _vassith_ too, and Oblivion take the lot of them!”  
  
Iriel couldn’t help laughing.  _Oh gods, he’s engaged this part of his brain now, has he?_  
  
Julan’s voice was getting loud. A woman steering a small child along the other side of the street increased her pace, too late. The child was staring at their clasped hands, and pointing, eyes wide, saying something to his mother.  
  
Iriel waved, smiled, and, very deliberately, kissed Julan on the cheek. The mother gave them an ugly look, and dragged the kid away with arm-wrenching rapidity. Iriel watched them go, chewing his lip.  
  
_Is my sense of self so twisted by everything I’ve been through that I can’t bear the thought of being normal? Is that why I broke up with Kaye? Because he offered me a place somewhere we’d have been accepted, ordinary, invisible? Can I only get off on being controversial, now? Sex and secrets, am I just as bad? Gods, I hope not, that’d be unbearably stupid._  
  
_Or is shocking people my own small revenge, one of my tiny retaliatory violences, weaponising my own monstrosity against those who see me like that? Perhaps Julan’s right: perhaps change sometimes requires hitting people over the head with things, until they stop getting in your way._  
  
_I know wanting to spit in the eye of society is childish and pointless, but after all it’s done to me: fuck it. I need what I need. If I could change that, I wouldn’t be in this mess. And… I’m so glad I am._  
  
Iriel laughed out loud, and as they rounded the corner into Redoran canton, he pulled Julan into a run.


	97. city

Clouds swaddled Vivec City in soft opacity, lending the morning a perpetual half-light, as if the god himself were dozing. Raindrops slicked the streets of Redoran Canton, forming pools of light that shattered beneath the holy golden tread of the Ordinators. They fell in listless waves against the windows of the Flowers of Gold cornerclub, their irregular patterns gradually drumming their way into Iriel’s germinal consciousness, gently disturbing white roots burrowed into the dark. He hadn’t slept this late, or this deeply in a long time, although his dreams had been a strange soil.

 _This is God’s city, different from others. Such is Mastery, and mortar and holy country. Such is my city, his city. City-face, golden face. There are many rooms in the house of the Master. Be easy, for from the Black Hands of your enemies I have delivered you._  
  
_I am in his pre-chimerical form, gaunt and pale and beautiful, skin stretched painfully thin on heretic’s bones, Anticipations encircling his arms. We lie on a table, lit by candles. Their fire-hair nimbus is the flesh and contradictions are the table._  
  
_His presence is instinctively understood, paradoxically beautiful and the so-called Prince of darker, hidden aspects. But the flowering scheme of Mephala requires an inner sea, a revolutionary method. My body is shadowy, sensitive, compassionate, and Warrior-Poet of the Aurbis. This is Mercy, murder, sex, and beautiful. An artistic violence, and transformation is an understanding of the other._  
  
_Self-thought streets rush through tunnel blood. All cities are destroyed, and worry not ye who walk with all these subtle milky undercurrents and integrate these thousands, the thousands of hands that I am. Mephala is in veins and hollows. There are temples erected along the hollow of his back. I have built them. I have rebuilt myself. I serve and am served_  
  
_I stare with my own hands of wire, draw breath, open eyes and I am a golden mask, saying: I am dead. He is dead. The Pomegranate Banquet brought many spirits back from the dead. My body is crawling with all gathered to see me rising up like a monolithic instrument of pleasure. My spine is the main road to the city that I am. He adds new doors to me and I become effortlessly trans-immortal with the comings and goings and the stride-heat of the market where I am traded for._  
  
_I raise lanterns to light his hollows, lend wax to the thousands, the candlesticks that bear my name again and again, the name innumerable, mantra and priest, scoffed at, amused, desired, stolen, paid for, wheeling, circling, running river language, giggling with each new land, god-city, filling every corner with the naming name. Soon I flood over into a new people and liturgy as a god of divine aspect, a creature of solid light. I am made of wire and blood and explicitly described and I accede my own precedent, world without am. The world without is. The world filled with light, and I–_  
  
  
He was thrown into wakefulness, gasping and twitching like a fish on the deck of a boat. He sat up. Julan’s side of the bed was empty.  
  
_Don’t jump to conclusions, Ire. No doubt there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation._  
  
_Such as: he was curious, and now his curiosity is sated, he doesn’t know how to tell me he–_  
  
_Shut up! That’s what we’re not assuming! He’s probably just in the bathroom, or–_  
  
_My coin-purse is gone._  
  
_What?_  
  
_It was on top of the chest of drawers. It isn’t there any more. He’s gone, and all the money is gone. Jump to a conclusion from that, genius._  
  
_No… He wouldn’t…_  
_You thought that before._  
_But… surely…_  
_You thought that before._  
_No. nonononononononono–_  
  
“Sheogorath!” Julan slammed the door behind him, a steaming cup in his other hand. “ _That_ was one of the more embarrassing conversations of my life.” He took Ire’s coin-purse from his pocket and threw it onto the bed. “I paid for the room. They added ‘extra charges’. For 'contravention of Redoran virtues’. And said we had to be out within the hour, or there’s a 'late fee’.”  
  
He huffed in frustration, then noticed Iriel’s expression, frozen on the edge of a death-drop slide into panic. “You OK?” Ire nodded, gratefully sinking back from the brink. “Good. Here, got you some of that tea you like.”  
  
He watched Julan place the bittergreen tea onthe bedside table next to him, hiding his smile behind the blankets, as if it might escape, or vaporise on contact with the air.  
  
_Tell me, Iriel, when was the moment you realised you’d fallen for him? Was it one of the many times he did something stupid to defend you? When you kissed? The glorious chaos of last night? No, it was when he started bringing me tea without being asked._  
  
Julan sat down on the bed (beds, really: two singles hastily shoved together, neither of them daring to go back and ask for a double room). Ire, suddenly self-conscious, wondered how terrible he looked. Judging by Julan’s expression, though, he couldn’t be making a completely unappealing impression.  
  
Awkwardness descended like a wet parachute into the silence, each wondering if the other would be the one to break eye-contact. In the end, Julan looked away first, rubbing his neck. “I… uh… it’ll be better next time, I swear.”  
  
“It…” Iriel hesitated.  _…it wasn’t bad, it was oddly wonderful, not because either of us demonstrated mindblowing skill or restraint, which is hardly surprising, considering, but… it was wonderful because you made me feel more honestly desired than anyone has for a very long time. I can’t tell you how much I needed that._  
  
It was true: he couldn’t tell Julan. He felt vulnerable enough without risking a rupture of his fragile, in-control façade, barely concealing the vortex of dependency and desperation howling through him.  
  
“It was… fine,” he shrugged.   
  
Julan grimaced. “Next time’ll be better than fine.”  
  
“What are these Redoran virtues?” Ire enquired, keen to change the subject. “I hate contravening things accidentally. I’d much rather do it on purpose.”  
  
“Duty, gravity, piety. I can remember, because that swivel-eyed nix-bitch out there repeated them several times.”  
  
“Their virtue is duty? How tautological. Let me guess, their duty is virtue. What vacuous nonsense. And as for piety… how can they say I’m not pious? I recited the names of multiple Aedra and Daedra last night.”  
  
“Yeah. That’s the problem.” Julan’s mouth twitched into a slight smile. “You could have been quieter, you know.”  
  
“Silence spells are a terrible idea in bed, especially for the first time with someone. Communication is important! I fell onto the floor as it was!”  
  
“They can’t say you don’t have gravity covered, then.”  
  
The silence lengthened again. Julan fell back onto the pillow, frowning at the cracks in the ceiling. Then he looked at Ire. “So… did we ruin our friendship, yet?” He was trying to make it sound like a joke, but his eyes suggested otherwise.  
  
Ire drew shallow breaths, his chest a bubbling flask of volatile effervescence. He felt the façade, never his strong point, begin to crack. “I don’t think so,” he said, his smile slipping free of the blankets. “It’s slightly scuffed, at best. We’ll have to be  _far_ more thorough next time.”  
  
  
It’s easy to look back, and say, especially of other people: well,  _obviously_ it was a bad idea to get so emotionally entangled with this person so quickly, whatever made you imagine that was going to end well? There would be plenty of people queuing up to tell Iriel this, later. Sometimes he agreed completely, at others, he wondered if avoiding it would have made any difference to anything, in the long run.  
  
At the time, neither of them felt any more choice in the matter than a boulder rolling down a mountain. Less Bal Molagmer, and more burning stones, slipped through well-meaning, safely-gloved fingers. Ire had never been sure, reading  _Flames of the Firelark_ , if he identified more with the boy, the girl or the escaped firelarks. Right now, he was the aviary. The tea went cold, and Iriel went down in flames.


	98. skin

“Have I found all of them now?”  
  
“Uhhh… yeah, I think so. Oh, wait, there’s one on my head, feel here. You can’t really see it because most of it’s under my hair. Scamp claw, when I was five. Mother was worried I didn’t have anyone to play with. I… don’t know what made her think that idea was ever going to end well.”

“Oh gods. I’m lucky my hair covers that Varline magical exit wound, too, it’s a rather unpleasant shade of purple. I’m afraid I don’t have any exciting stories about the few others I have. You were there when I got most of them, after all. My life was very physically uneventful, before I met you.”  
  
“Shani always hated getting scars. Not because of vanity, exactly. I think it was more that she didn’t like having proof things could affect her permanently. She said once that she wanted her skin to have no memory, like ash, or sand. Me, I like having reminders of all the stupid things I’ve done. Teaches me not to do it again, right?”  
  
“Do you think so? Life always seems horribly inevitable to me. Even when things that happened were my fault, like the Varline fiasco, I never feel as if there was any other possible outcome. I’m always trapped by my past and my present, my brain pushing me screaming down the same old paths. Scars aren’t lessons to me, they’re just reminders of pain I’d prefer to forget.”  
  
  
“We’ll have to pay that blighted late fee, now. This trip’s been as much use as a one-legged guar, money-wise.”  
  
“If I meditated nude on a mountaintop for centuries, I could not possibly care any less.”  
  
  
“Hey, what about this line on your hand here? Is that a scar?”  
  
“Oh… yes, I’ve had that since I was about… nine? Ten? My pa tried to teach me how to gut a fish, but the knife slipped because I was crying too hard to see straight. He’d just made me smash its head into a rock. I’d never killed anything before.”  
  
“You hardly talk about your father. You complain about your mother, but you rarely mention him. Was he not around much?”  
  
“Oh… He was around. Sort of. When he wasn’t out in his boat, or in the tavern, or asleep. I suppose that was a lot of the time, though, mostly it was just me and my mam. Sorry - my mother and I. I slip back into Lillandril mode when I talk about my parents.”  
  
“Your voice changes too, it gets more… musical. Like Helende’s.”  
  
“It’s the accent. It’s hard to lose completely.”  
  
“You do it when you’re drunk, sometimes, or very tired. I like it.”  
  
“Aww. Thank you. I tried to get rid of it after I got to the Tower. I had to speak proper, like, or they made fun of me. You should hear my pa, though, pure Lillandril docks.”  
  
“Did you say he was a fisherman?”  
  
“Yes, that’s right. He loved all that outdoorsy stuff, wind, sea and sky, you know? He tried to get me into it. He used to take me out in his boat, and I’d just sit there, waiting until it was over, and I could go home and read a book. Then he tried to take me hiking, camping in the woods. I hated every minute of it; I was a terrible disappointment. He gave up, eventually. After the fish-knife thing, actually, because ma hit the roof when I came home all blood and screams, said I was too delicate and he was going to get me killed. After that, I only saw him at home, sitting in silence, mending nets or knitting. He was never much of a talker, my pa.”  
  
“Knitting?”  
  
“Well, it’s not so far from mending nets, is it? He knitted me lots of things, when he heard I’d been sent to Cyrodiil. The last contact I ever had with him, as it happens. No letter, just this huge squishy parcel, full of wool! He probably thought anywhere beyond the Isles was as cold as Skyrim. Still I was grateful for it all, when winter came. Even the dreadful hat I swore I’d never wear, because it was orange, had slits for your ears, and tied under the chin! He used to say that style was very practical, on a boat.”  
  
“I’d like to see you in that.”  
  
“I only tried it on because Reu made me, and then he declared it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, and wouldn’t stop stroking my ears. It stank of fish till I washed it in vinegar. Then it stank of pickled fish. I… do wish I still had it, or… or anything he made me, really. I don’t know what happened to my things, after I went to jail. All long gone now.”  
  
“Did your father feel the same way as your mother? About you being gay, I mean.”  
  
“Who the fuck knows?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Sorry, I just… he never joined in with her rants, but he didn’t do anything to stop her either. He used to leave, spend all day in the bloody tavern. He was home less and less, as I got older. I don’t blame him. No, that’s a lie, I do blame him. I didn’t want to be there either, but I needed an ally against ma, and he wasn’t it. But then, I wasn’t the son he wanted, either, was I?”  
  
“Oh Malacath… please don’t… I shouldn’t have asked.”  
  
“Sorry… sorry… no, it’s… sorry.”  
  
“Shhh… You’re a… a really great person, and–”  
  
“Stoppit, I’m… it’s not that. I refuse to cry about my stupid fucking sad childhood shit any more. I just… just.. realised… *sniiiff* my pa would love you. He really would. The two of you could do outdoorsy things all day, building fires, gutting and skinning things to your hearts’ content. He’d fucking  _adore_  you. It’d finally be something we had in common. It’d be wonderful, and it’ll never… ever… happen.”  
  
“Ire…”  
  
“…he could be dead and i’d never even know.”  
  
“Shhh…”  
  
“…i burned it, i burned all of it, it’s gone…”  
  
“You don’t  _need_ it. You don’t need them. I’m here now, and I’m… I’m not going to let anyone hurt you like that any more.”  
  
“It’s not… that’s not your responsibility.”  
  
“Yes it  _is_. It is now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iriel's “Varline magical exit wound” story is told in a side-story [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5564653)


	99. respect

“All right.” Iriel balled his fists and looked Julan in the eye. “I can do this. We’re all fucking adults here, and I can do this simple thing.”  
  
“Of course you can.” Julan yawned, and shook his head, the Divine Intervention spell that had brought them to Ebonheart still buzzing in his ears. “Do what? I didn’t catch why we’re even here. I thought you wanted to get the Balmora strider.”  
  
“The evening one. I have an errand, first. Two errands, in fact, both thoroughly unpleasant.” Iriel exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring, lips pressed firmly together. “All right. Let’s do the easy one first. Go to the Argonian Mission, and tell them about what happened to Reeh-Jah. I should have done this long ago. Perhaps they can get word to his family; they deserve to know the truth.”  
  
Small twinges of guilt and unhappiness flickered across the muscles of Julan’s face. “That’s… the  _easy_ part?” he croaked.

Im-Kilaya received the information with dignified regret, calmly noting down the details, as if he catalogued twenty such atrocities daily before breakfast. He probably did, thought Ire, brushing a sleeve across his eyes in frustration. He’d resigned himself to his inability to keep his composure, but, meeting the Argonian ambassador’s unblinking gaze, he was painfully aware of two things. That his tears were not for Reeh-Jah, whom he had barely known, but due to his own shocked glimpse of a world full of horrors he had no conception of. And that Im-Kilaya understood this perfectly, and his impassive exterior belied a fuller comprehension of the depths and cost of the tragedy than Iriel would ever achieve.  
  
“Is there anything else I can do to help,” he asked, in fear and trepidation that there might be.  
  
Im-Kilaya nodded. “Do not avert your eyes from the suffering you see around you,” he said. “Give aid when it is possible. But when aid is not possible, bear witness. Do not look away from others’ pain, even if it is more comfortable to do so. Thank you for bearing witness to Reeh-Jah’s suffering, and his journey to freedom.”  
  
  
“D'you still think that was the easy part?” Julan asked him, over lunch at the Six Fishes.  
  
“No,” sighed Ire, “I think I’m a self-absorbed piece of shit. But the second thing is still unpleasant, and I want to look good for it. Are my eyes any better yet?”  
  
“They’re fine. Probably limpid or something.”  
  
“I’ll take it.” He pushed away the remains of his hackle-lo salad, and stood up, trying to remember what girding ones loins actually involved, and if it required specialist equipment.   
  
  
  
“Never  _mind_  that. Do you have it, or not?”  
  
“…I do.” Kaye’s eyes were as unflinchingly direct as ever, though his smile was conspicuous by its absence. “Just wanted to check you were doing OK. Sorry if I offended with the question, it was kindly meant.”  
  
“I’m not offended,” replied Iriel. Indeed, Kaye’s slightly passive-aggressive air was a relief. Ire couldn’t have dealt with his charismatic demigod persona right now. As it was, he felt slightly more in control of the situation. “It simply isn’t any of your business, and has nothing to do with the conversation. I want my scarf back, and I had it last when I was with you. It was a gift from a friend, and I’m rather attached to it.”  
  
“It’s at home. I’ll bring it in. When will you be back? Or should I send it somewhere?”   
  
Iriel paused. He had no immediate plans to return to Ebonheart, but something made him reluctant to give Kaye his current address, and encourage him to send parcels. “Can’t you leave it here, and I’ll collect it when I can?”  
  
Kaye shrugged. “Sure. Things do tend to go walkabout round here, though.” He paused. “If you wait until after prayers, you could come home with me, and I could–”  
  
“No.”  
  
“…No. Maybe not.”  
  
Kaye glanced over to the far wall, where Julan was leaning against the notice-board, pretending he wasn’t listening in. His studiously casual air, arms folded, looking everywhere but in their direction, still broadcast more smug possession than anything else he could have been doing.  
  
None of it was lost on Kaye. He turned back to Iriel, eyebrow pointedly raised. “Guess you hadn’t fallen for me as far as you thought. More of a slight stumble, you might say. Easily corrected.”  
  
Iriel was taken aback, less by his words, and more by the raw, bitter note that had crept into his voice, the brief, wounded flash in his eyes.  
  
_Fuck. I… actually hurt him. I didn’t mean to do that. But he’s right to be angry with me: it’s my fault. I got carried away in the heat of the moment, and said things I didn’t mean.  
_  
He swallowed. “When I told you that, I was… in an emotionally compromised state, and I may have–”  
  
“Don’t worry. I know what you were.”  
  
Ire didn’t ask what Kaye meant by that. Instead, he squirrelled it away to his file of amorphous personal failings to be constructed and reconstructed uselessly in the small, insomniac hours of the night. He nodded stiffly, and turned away.  
  
  
“Would you look at some of these jobs?” Julan was browsing the notice board, voice spraying scorn across the chapels. “Hunt down a ‘witch’, it says here. As far as I can tell, 'witch’ means Daedra worshipper. That’s an assault on religious freedom, and if you ask me, 'witch’ is a slur. It’s like with mabrigash, people always–”  
  
“Shhh, not now.” Ire shook his head. “I’m sure you’re right, but let’s just go.”  
  
“OK, but you have to see this one, it’s hilarious. 'Blessed Commission to retrieve the mortal effects of our departed brother, Linus Iulus, as seen in the Visions of the Holy Oracle’. I think that means they need someone to go and find a dead guy’s stuff. Based purely on something that half-cracked woman in blue over there said. Lalatia, I think she’s called. The one with the face like someone’s dragging a dead fish down the back of her neck.”  
  
“You’re mocking prophecies, now? You?” Something else was bothering Ire about this, but he couldn’t place it.  
  
“That’s exactly why I know this is such complete guarshit!” Julan snorted. “What kind of s'wit thinks the gods are interested in this stuff? Read it, they want someone to find his staff! 'Special reward offered for the safe return of Linus Iulus’ Silver Staff of Shaming’. My god sends prophecies about the fate of Morrowind, she doesn’t act like a divine version of a lost property box! Anyway, what kind of religious oddball names a stick a Staff of  _Shaming?_ ”  
  
“That’s enough.” Kaye was striding over, maintaining control, but inwardly seething like a vial of fire salts brought to the boil. “That mission is a solemn and sacred task,” he barked. “It needs someone capable of sensitivity and compassion. Linus died a hero, taking on enemies of the Nine. He knew he was weak in body, but he begged us to send him, to let him prove the strength of his faith. And by Stendarr he surely did, though Lalatia and I must live with the burden of our decision. So if you mean to stand here, in the holy Chapel of the Divines and insult our Priestess and the memory of a finer man than you’ll… I’m going to have to…” He kept biting back the ends of his sentences.  
  
“What?” Julan, sensing blood in the water, was grinning nastily.  
  
Kaye exhaled, and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Ask you politely to leave,” he said, sounding very tired.  
  
_Ohhhh FUCK. Linus Iulus. I remember now. Kaye mentioned him at the party, when I was eavesdropping. It’s his fucking dead ex, oh shittening cocksticks, could this possibly be any worse, if I’d pissed in his breakfast?  
_  
“Julan, shut the fuck up,” he said. “Kaye’s right, you’re completely out of line.”   
  
Julan stared at him like a puppy who’d brought the newspaper and got kicked in the ear. “I only–”  
  
“SHUT. UP.” Ire began shoving Julan towards the door.  
  
  
“OK.” Julan’s face was stonier than the walls of Castle Ebonheart behind him. “What happened in there? Why’d you side with him over me? What’s this about?”  
  
Ire tried to take a moment to compose himself. It only served as a longer run-up. “About? What do you THINK it’s about? It’s about you being an insensitive arse! Do you think I’m supposed to take your side no matter what, is that it?”  
  
“When it’s stupid Imperial Cult guarshit like that, I hope you’d want to! You told me you didn’t care about it beyond Kaye, so what’s the deal now? Which do you still care about - him, or all that Nine Divines scuttle?”  
  
“I don’t want to go around insulting them, that’s all! Clearly this is completely outside your experience, but I don’t have to care about something in order to be polite! It’s called basic respect, you arrogant–”  
  
“RESPECT?! What respect has the Imperial Cult ever shown me, that they deserve any back? You met that s'wit of a missionary, but he’s just the soft option, you heard what I said about the Legion! You read that wanted poster for the Daedra worshipping witch - that could be my mother, for all they care! That’s what they think of us, primitive idiots in need of correction, or dangerous savages to be eliminated! They don’t want to respect our beliefs, they only want to–”  
  
“STOP GIVING ME THIS BLOODY LECTURE AGAIN!!!” Heads turned on the street nearby, and a small part of Iriel’s brain sighed despairingly:  _oh great, so we’re doing this, are we? fighting in public again?_  The other parts were too busy fighting in public to listen. “I’ve heard it several times, and it’s completely beside the point! None of it’s an excuse to be an utter shit to anyone associated with the Imperial Cult or the Empire!”  
  
“Defending the Empire, now, are we? I see.”  
  
“No! No, you don’t see, or you wouldn’t be doing this! I used to  _wish_  the Empire interfered more in Summerset society, because it might have made it less rigid and obsessively traditional! When I came to the Imperial City, I couldn’t believe how… uncontrolled everything felt, in comparison. On the one hand, nobody seemed to care about keeping things clean. On the other, wonderfully, nobody cared about me! There were suddenly people of other races all around me, who didn’t care about my bloodline at all, or if I held a boy’s hand in the street! I still miss the Imperial City. I even fell in love with an Imperial, remember?”  
  
“Yes, and you don’t usually have a problem criticising him, because he was so clearly a piece of shit!”  
  
“Oh, he was a pathological liar, and a compulsive thief, among many, many other terrible personal flaws, but none of them had anything to do with the fact he was Imperial! He was the scum of the streets, the bottom of the pecking order, further from the rich colonists here in Ebonheart than you can possibly imagine! He’d been told he was less than nothing for so long he believed it himself, and… ugh. Look what you did, you made me defend him! But my point… my point is that you can’t hate people simply for being Imperial!”  
  
“Why not? It’s not about whether they’re nice people who pet guar and take care of their grandmothers, it’s about what they represent, here in this country! If I hate Imperials, it’s because they walk around like they own the place, and every time I see one, I’m reminded that thanks to the blighted Armistice, they  _do!_ ”   
  
Julan gestured expansively at the Imperial brickwork around them, and almost laid out a passing old lady. “LOOK at this place! None of this should ever have been allowed!”  
  
Iriel narrowed his eyes. “Interesting argument. Because Fandus says the Empire is the only thing keeping Morrowind afloat, financially. Opening Vvardenfell to Imperial colonisation was the only way to even begin to redress the balance. And now the Blight’s stopping even that from being profitable; the losses barely offset the ebony. Fandus says you should be grateful the Empire sticks around to prop up the economy.”  
  
“Oh, Fandus says, does he? Why don’t you go fuck  _him_  then, if you like Imperials so much.”  
  
Iriel mentally composed a number of responses to that. He had the presence of mind to know he would quickly regret saying any of them out loud. He spent a few moments saying them silently, instead. Then he tried to haul the conversation back from the brink, before the terrified Breton girl nearby, currently clutching her basket and staring at the loud, angry Ashlander, decided to summon the guards.  
  
_Aaaaaand… because it’s slightly possible I’m transferring some of my guilt about hurting Kaye into yelling at you, and I should probably stop._

“You’re free to think what you like about Imperials in general, and the Cult in particular,” he said, as reasonably as he could. “but it is still not appropriate to mock them while standing in their place of worship. Especially when I need a favour from someone I’m on very shaky ground with, and you’re insulting his dead boyfriend.”  
  
“His… dead? …that Linus guy?”  
“Exactly.”  
“I didn’t know that!”  
“No! Because it didn’t occur to you to wonder about anyone’s feelings other than your own!”  
“…Oh.” 

  
  
“How long until the strider?”  
“Four shitting hours.”  
“D'you want to get a drink?”  
“Fuck, yes.” 


	100. saviour

“Sorry, seras. It’s nothing against you. I’ve got no problem with n'wah, nor Ashlanders neither. This is about my strider, see? You just rest a while here until your friend feels stronger. Suran’s busy enough, what with the Temple crowd. There’ll be another strider along soon. But my Nutti can’t take any more of this. Got a very delicate sense of smell, she has. Look, she’s already venting spline from her cthornax. That’s a sign of stress.”

Iriel nodded, already resigned to delay. Julan’s state the previous night had ensured that, even had they somehow made it to the silt strider port, the driver would never have let him on. Ire had been forced to pass an expensive night in the Six Fishes, playing chaperone and nursemaid. Ire wouldn’t have called Julan an alcoholic, exactly. The problem was more that he was incapable of stopping himself from drinking, once he had been allowed to begin.  
  
Ire paid the caravaner for the part of the journey they had managed to complete, before Julan’s hangover reached critical mass. He approached the patient, who was leaning over the edge of the carapace, and gently rubbed his back. “Julan? We’re getting off here. In Suran. Until you’re less vomity. All right?”  
  
“Urrrrrrgh.” Julan clawed his way upright like a reanimated corpse. Movement, it must be said, was far from his only similarity. “Don’t think I have anything left to throw up.”  
  
“You thought that twice before. Let’s find somewhere quiet to sit that’s not violently swaying around, yes?”  
  
Suran was a picturesque Hlaalu town on the banks of Lake Masobi. Across the water to the west, acres of tilled plantation fields stretched towards the hills, beyond which lay Balmora, their destination. In the other direction, bleak ashlands surrounded a forbidding mountain range. According to the caravaner, the mountains were dotted with pilgrimage sites holy to the Tribunal Temple.   
  
“You lads don’t strike me as pilgrims,” he’d said, early on in the journey, before he realised conversation with either of them was a lost cause, “but if you are, you want to change to the Molag Mar strider at Suran. Very popular overnight stop, Suran is, on the pilgrimage route.” Ire hoped that meant there were places to rest and eat - or, in Julan’s case, slowly sip water in a darkened room.  
  
Taking a recommendation from the departing caravaner, they did indeed find themselves in a darkened room. Iriel, already suspicious of any establishment with the words “earthly delights” in the name, took one look around, and sighed. “I’m too fucking gay for this shit,” he muttered.  
  
Julan squinted at the naked Breton woman gyrating half-heartedly on a small stage by the far wall, and turned to Ire, blinking in confused exhaustion. “Am I… still drunk?” he asked, plaintively.  
  
“Hi there!” A pretty Redguard sprang up from an armchair, a quickly pasted on but nevertheless sweet smile adorning her face. She was wearing more than the dancer, but not much. “What are you looking for today, seras?”  
  
Behind her smile, Ire could see her assessing them briefly, her gaze lingering on Julan. “I’m reeeeally sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid we don’t serve Ashlanders here. Sorry.” She simpered apologetically. “I don’t make the rules.”  
  
Ire waved his hands, glad Julan was too catatonic to even register the snub. “No, no, it’s fine, we’re not in the market for anything like that. We were looking for a cornerclub or something, I think there’s been a mistake. So sorry to bother you. Is… is there anywhere else in town that serves food and drink, where we can sit quietly until the next strider?”  
  
“Well, there’s the Tradehouse.”  
  
“That sounds fine. Thank–”  
  
“Iiiiiiif you don’t mind it being a skooma den.”  
  
“Ah. I… do, actually. Sorry. It’s not that I judge, but I’m in recovery myself, and–”   
  
“Hey.” Julan interrupted, one hand clutching his forehead as he addressed the Redguard. “Could you… ask your friend over there to stop spinning around like that? I’m already dizzy, and… it’s… very… unbalancing.”  
  
“Cooo-eeee, Marelle? You might as well stop dancing, these gentlemen aren’t here for the show!” The Redguard sat back in her chair, and smiled, more naturally this time. “My name’s Caminda. To be honest, this time of day is terribly dead, customer-wise. I get so bored. If you’d like to hang around for a bit, I don’t mind at all, provided you behave yourselves. Drop me some coin, and I could even do you an egg on toast.”  
  
“This is why Madame Desele shouldn’t leave you in charge, Cam,” cackled the Breton, as she headed into a back room, towel slung around her neck. “You’ll be darning their socks next.”  
  
  
“Mara’s blighted arse! He  _wasn’t!_ ” Iriel paused, a forkful of kwama egg half-way to his mouth. “Holy shitting fuck, so what did you do?”  
  
Caminda arched an impish eyebrow, milking the anticipation of her audience. Then she cracked, her face lapsing into a sheepish grin. “I screamed, slapped him across the face, and his false fangs came right off. He was so mortified, he ran away. He didn’t even come back for his teeth. Not much of a creature of the night,was he?”

“Gods!” Ire was laughing, trying not to choke on his egg. “I’m glad he was full of it, but it’s still a scary story. Thank Stendarr you’re not working on your own any more, I don’t know how anyone does it. Gaela and Merisse used to always work as a pair, one hiding nearby, in case someone got nasty.”  
  
“Oh yes, I like it much better here. For now, anyway.” She sighed, wistfully. “There’s not really much future in the slaver-pilgrim circuit, and it’d be lovely to make some real money, someday. Be the next Muriel Sette, you know?”  
  
Ire dropped his fork. “Muriel Sette of Sadrith Mora?  _Dirty_  Muriel?”  
  
“Oh, you’ve heard of her?”  
  
“She’s my fucking landlady! Is she famous?”  
  
Caminda blinked a few times, then began giggling squeakily, like a dozen fieldmice rolling down the stairs. “You should ask her yourself!” she gasped, finally. “Ask her about her career before she made her fortune and retired! And then…” she bit her lip, and slipped her fingers coyly over his, “…would you  _please_ ask her to send me her autograph?”  
  
“Can we go?” Julan had woken from his brief nap on the couch and staggered over. He looked less nauseous, but very uncomfortable.  
  
“You don’t like it here?” Ire looked up from his game of scuttleboard with Cam. “It’s over an hour till the next strider.”  
  
“I’d still rather go.”  
  
  
They sat by the lake in the afternoon sunshine. Iriel leaned back on his elbows, feeling remarkably peaceful, by his standards. Julan was less serene, scowling and fidgeting.  
  
“How’s your head?” enquired Ire. “You could probably take another cure poison potion now, if you wanted.”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
“You’re clearly not, though. So what is it?”  
  
Julan stared out over the water. “I hate places like this,” he said. “All shiny and clean on the outside, and all festering corruption underneath. Everyone so friendly, as long as you can pay for it. Everyone a slave to something or someone.”  
  
Ire shot him a sidelong glance. “I imagine people who are actually physically enslaved might take issue with that rather melodramatic statement.”  
  
“Yeah, well. There are plenty of  _them_ , too. You saw the slave trader’s office we passed? He pointed across the lake, to the tilled fields beyond. "That’s where most of them end up, I’ll bet. Working on the saltrice plantations.” He grimaced. “It’s no better on this side, though.”  
  
“I don’t really think we’re in any position to judge. I take it you’re displeased with Caminda’s hospitality? I thought she was very accommodating, considering.”  
  
“She was. I liked her. I just… She shouldn’t have to do that.”  
  
“Make toast for itinerant gays?”  
  
“Have sex with strangers for money!”  
  
Julan’s outrage had enough genuine compassion in it that Iriel’s reply was more patient than it might otherwise have been. “Why not?”  
  
“Because some things shouldn’t be sold!”  
  
“What is it you think she’s selling, exactly? Her body hasn’t gone anywhere. She performs a service, like plenty of other people. Mercenaries sell their physical labour too, you know.”  
  
“It’s not the same thing at all.” Julan continued to glower at the lake. “You should have heard the stuff men used to say to Shani and the other girls, when we went into town,” he said. “Treating them like they were for sale, because they thought that was normal. That women were something you could buy, that they all had a price, and Velothi girls were  _cheap_.”  
  
“That’s horrible, but it’s hardly Cam’s fault.” __  
  
“I still wish she had something better. It’s degrading. I could never do it, I’d rather die.”  
  
Ire gave a resigned shrug, leaning forwards to hunch over his knees. “That’s your choice. Sometimes people find themselves in situations where all the possibilities for survival are shitty, and they have to pick the one they find least unbearable. I stole to feed my skooma habit, because with my illusion magic, that was the safest choice, as I saw it. Other people have different options.” He looked down and began shredding blades of grass between his fingers. _ ___  
  
I couldn’t do it either, I don’t think. It crossed my mind, when I was in Vivec, trying to afford skooma, and feeling very… detached from my body, at times, in ways that might have made aspects of it easier. But the very thought petrified me. Too much complicated social interaction. I can’t act, can’t advertise, can’t fake desire like that.  
  
They remained lost in their own thoughts until Julan broke the silence. “What I really don’t get,” he said, “is why you’d want to ruin sex like that. How could anyone give themselves to strangers for money, and then do the same thing with someone they loved. It’d be… horrible. I don’t understand how anyone could bring themselves to do that.”  
  
Iriel heaved a deep sigh. “It’s  _not_  the same thing, that’s how.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“I just do. It’s not the same.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean, you ‘just do’?”  
  
Iriel exhaled. “Things are intimate when you make them intimate. When you don’t… they’re not.” Ire stood up, brushing dry grass from his clothes. “The silt strider will be here soon. We should go.” He started scuffing through the grass towards town, hands shoved deep into his pockets.  
  
_Looking back, I’m ninety-six percent certain that Reu was sleeping with other men for money throughout the whole of our relationship. It would make sense of a lot of things. And I’m sure he didn’t tell me because he thought I’d freak out, and it’s true, I would have done, back then. Now, I might have understood. Xarxes knows those transactions were probably more straightforward and honourable than his relationship with me turned out to be. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, and it’s none of Julan’s business. He doesn’t know Reu, and he doesn’t need more reasons to hate him, hate Imperials and hate me by association._  
  
“So, we’re just going to leave?” Julan had stopped at the bottom of the stairs to the still-empty strider port. When Ire looked back to see why, he was clenching his jaw, hand on hip. “We’re not going to do  _anything?_ ”  
  
“I don’t understand what you want to do.”  
“Help!”  
“Help who?”  
“Caminda, and the others!”  
  
“Oh, for…” Ire closed his eyes, lest they roll out of his head. “What exactly are you proposing to do? I paid her extremely well for her trouble, to the point that we’re virtually broke, now. More importantly, she didn’t  _ask_ for any help. Stop trying rescue people who don’t want it, and trying to be a saviour nobody even fucking needs!”  
  
“What’s THAT supposed to mean?”  
  
“You  _know_  what,” Ire hissed, voice lowered, although the street was empty. “Why do you really want to be this Nerevarine, what are you trying to prove? That you’re a true Ashlander, a warrior, a hero? Who are you trying to prove it to? Your mother, Shani, the Ahemmusa, everyone who’s ever rejected or insulted you? You don’t need their validation! You never did! Is all this your delusion, or your mother’s? What do  _you_  really want?”  
  
“I want to help my people!”  
  
“You keep saying that, but did you ever ask them what kind of help they wanted from you? I met the Ahemmusa, they seemed like reasonable people. Remember when you said maybe you should just go home and herd guar? Maybe you should! Maybe they need someone to help with the fucking guar more than they need some nebulous saviour figure!”  
  
Julan was looking at him, tense, still angry, but wavering, the corner of his mouth quirking uncertainly.  _Blessed Aedra, am I finally beginning to get through to him?_  
  
“My ma wanted to change the world, you know,” Ire said, every word marinated in years of bitterness. “Save people. Do what was best for them, whether they liked it or not. She had her goals, and everything else was collateral damage. Every _one_  else, rather.” He turned on his heel and carried on walking.  
  
“FINE!” Julan ran up the stairs, caught Ire’s elbow and pulled him round to face him. “Fine, if you’re so certain about the brothel girls. But what about them?” He threw his arm in the direction of the plantations again. “You tell me they don’t need our help! Look me in the eye and tell me  _they’re_ perfectly happy being slaves, and we shouldn’t try to do anything!”  
  
“Magnus be praised, it’s the fucking Ebon Crest. Are you going to swing across the lake, now?”  
  
“Stop it! You look me in the eye and tell me those slaves don’t deserve better lives! After the way we failed Reeh-Jah, you don’t think we owe it to them to–”  
  
“Exactly! We failed him, and he died! So what in Oblivion makes you think we’d fare any better trying to help an entire plantation, crawling with guards! There’s nothing we can do, Julan, not here, not now! It takes more than a couple of idiots like us to fight institutionalised slavery!”  
  
“So we do nothing?”  
  
“Slavery is a system! It’s not only about freeing the slaves in the fields, it’s about stopping the raiders stealing more children from Black Marsh to replace them! Anything we do could make things worse!”  
  
“I knew you’d say no,” Julan said quietly. “I just wanted to hear what reason you’d give  _this_ time.”  
  
Ire was silent for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek. Then he said, coldly, “Do you know what fights systems better than individuals? Other systems. Do you know which system wants to stop slavery? The Empire. So if you care about the lives of slaves as much as you claim to do, you ought to want more Imperial control of Morrowind. Perhaps  _you’d_  care to look me in the eye, and tell me whether that’s true, or whether you consider your national pride more important than their suffering.”  
  
  
As the strider lurched through the Ascadian Isles, Iriel leaned over the side, watching tiny, half-clothed Khajiit and Argonian figures, bending over the furrows. Occasionally one would look up as the strider passed, and Ire would catch a brief glimpse of a face. He tried not to look away, although he wasn’t quite sure why.  
  
_What does it mean, to bear witness to suffering? What good is that to anyone? I used to hate it when my ma made me smile at Ousters, because I was embarrassed, for myself, and for them. If I were an Ouster, I thought, I wouldn’t want to be smiled at by strangers. And now I am one, and it’s true. I don’t want fake smiles, fake sympathy. Who would? That can’t be what Im-Kilaya meant._  
  
_Ousters are socially invisible. That’s why smiling was a political act of resistance, according to mam. Slaves are everywhere here, but they’re invisible too, they’re not considered real people. Which means their suffering isn’t real, either._  
  
_Fuck… was she right? Invisibility’s always been an escape route for me, a relief. What if I’d never had any choice? To suffer, and know that your pain never extended beyond the boundaries of your self to reach anyone else. What would that do to you? Would you start to doubt your own identity, your experiences, your feelings, your sense of what’s normal?_  
  
_Perhaps bearing witness to suffering could mean to show you believe in it, too. To confirm their reality back to them, tell them they’re not imagining things, they’re still a person, not disappearing into the unreality of their own pain._

“Julan?”  
  
“…yeah?”  
  
“I’m sorry I made it sound like you had to choose between helping slaves and protecting your people from the Empire. I know the Ashlanders have suffered a lot, too.”  
  
“…Thanks. You… might have a point, as well. The Great Houses have done more to harm my people then anyone,  _and_  they’re the ones responsible for slavery. All authentic Dunmer cruelty. I… focus too much on the Empire, sometimes. Maybe it is about pride.”  
  
“Do you want to come and wave at slaves with me?”  
  
“Wha… you’re… You? Waving at people? Have you been in the sun too long?”  
  
“I don’t think they’re allowed to wave back, or they get in trouble, but I might do it anyway.”  
  
“What good does that do?”  
  
“Probably nothing. But the worst that can happen is they think I’m ridiculous, and I can live with that. So do you want to? There are some children in the next field.”  
  
“OK.”


	101. shift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains A Musical Number! If you are so inclined, The Rav'nous Flame can be sung roughly to the tune of [The Wind That Shakes the Barley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkBQggRBqEY).

“Neath stubborn stars and mirthless moons, I waited for my true love.  
Through dew-drenched morns and aching noons, I waited for my true love.  
And when the stars arose again to mock my weary head,  
I cared not for their pallid touch. I knew my love was dead.”  
  
In the downstairs bar of the South Wall Corner Club in Balmora, a rare combination of circumstances was occurring. The phenomenon produced by this cosmic alignment was less spectacular, perhaps, than a perfect double rainbow or a total solar eclipse, but no less unusual. Iriel was engaged in a simple but inoffensive task, he was relaxed, and he was genuinely happy. Most crucially, he was completely certain he was alone. And he was singing.

“I laid me on the cold, cold ground, for nothing now could warm me.  
I made the night with cries resound, until he rose before me.  
His hair hung in those self-same braids, when pledged he we’d be married,  
But through his heart hung Orgnum’s spear, his life-blood down it carried.”

He finished sponging down one table, and moved on to the next. Two down, three to go. The bar would be closed for another hour, he was the only soul in the building, and the front door was locked.  
  
“‘O go thou home, my faithful girl, the waves my bones do cover.  
And put back on thy crown of pearl, and choose again a lover.’  
'O tell me not to choose again, when long ago I’ve chosen,  
My home is cold beside thee now, my heart for others frozen.’”  
  
Caius had taken his notes with barely even a nod, and told him to return in three days, when he’d had time to study them, write his report and prepare new orders. In the meantime, Ire was staying at the South Wall, and finding that not all Thieves’ Guild jobs involved thievery.  
  
Sottilde had laughed at his worries about balancing income against morality. “D'ya think I go shinnin’ down chimneys for my bed an’ board?” she’d scoffed, gesturing at her hips. “I crack codes and pour pints, and right now, I’ve got too many of both. You want to earn some cash, you can take my afternoon cleaning shift. You  _can_ clean, can’t you? That’s a thing, where you come from? You don’t just magic up a new table? Because don’t. These have carvings I’m sentimental about, like this one Rals did of my arse, with his initials on each cheek.”  
  
“'To claim my soul, through love’s desire, then gather thorn and peace-tree.  
And build a hot and hungry fire, that death may yet release me.’  
I gathered thorn and peace-tree wood, the pyre true love demanded,  
I conjured forth my yearning heart, a rav'nous flame commanded.”  
  
The tables clean, he took up the polishing cloth and began drying them. He took a moment to buff Sottilde’s engraved buttocks to a high shine.  _Some things I do for money, some things I do for love._  
  
“'Give me a tear from out thine eye. No more shalt thou–AAAAAAAAGH!!”  
  
“Don’t stop on our account!” said Sottilde, who was crouched on the stairs. Julan was beside her, and they were both grinning like tipsy goblins in a brewery.  
  
Ire staggered backwards into a table, waving an accusatory finger at them. “You sneaking fucks! I locked all the bloody doors, and I should have heard you open them!”  
  
“Don’t teach your boyfriend Silence spells, then.”  
  
“Why creep up on me at all, you treacherous shitworms?”  
  
“We heard your singing from outside!” Julan said. “We couldn’t believe it was really you.”  
  
Ire stared at them in wide-eyed horror, knuckles white around the table edge behind him. “Oh gods. People could hear me? From the  _street?_ ” He glanced around the room. “How can I kill myself as quickly and painlessly as possible, using only standard bar-room items?”  
  
Sottilde descended the stairs, still beaming. “Oh, give over. You sounded properly lovely, you did! We had to come in so we could hear better. We were s'posed to make a delivery for Habasi, but that can wait. You have to finish the song!”  
  
“Not with you here, I can’t!”  
  
“But you left us on an edge, you have to!”  
  
“An edge?”  
  
Julan sat on the table next to him, wrapping an arm around his waist. “The song!” he said, eyebrows leaping. “What happens next? Does she bring him back from the dead, or what?”  
  
Sottilde joined in. “Sing us the rest, c'mon.”  
  
“No! Go away and let me finish cleaning! I told you, I can’t sing if anyone’s actually listening!” He ran a hand through his hair, dragging it over his eyes, then peering through it, warily. “You… really thought I sounded all right?”  
  
Julan nodded, before settling his chin onto Ire’s shoulder. “You sounded beautiful. Sad, and sort of spooky, but very beautiful.”  
  
“That’s just because it’s in a minor key,” muttered Ire, but felt himself blush, and the corners of his mouth twitch upwards as Julan kissed his cheek.   
  
Tilde sidled up on the other flank. “If you finish the song, I’ll help you mop the floor. That’s the worst bit, let me tell you. It takes forever to get the dried mazte spills off.”  
  
Ire surrendered in the face of this dual-pronged assault. “Well… all right, but don’t expect much, I’m very out of practice. And for Stendarr’s sake, don’t stare at me while I sing it.”  
  
“Great!” Tilde lay back along the table, leaning on an elbow. “Julan, look sharp. Mop’s behind the bar.”  
  
  
“'Give me a tear from out thine eye. No more shalt thou need sorrow.  
And feed it to the rav'nous flame, and I’ll be thine tomorrow.’  
I caught a teardrop from my cheek, so long I’d been a-weeping,  
And fed it to the rav'nous flame, to stop death from him keeping.”  
  
“'Give me the dress from off thy back. No more shalt thou need honour.  
And feed it to the rav'nous flame, show death thy love is stronger.’  
I tore my gown from o'er my breast, no more cared I for hiding,  
And fed it to the rav'nous flame, to stop death with him biding.”  
  
“He’s a right old perv, this ghost,” Tilde remarked, from where she was lying, eyes closed, on the table. “He just wants one last look at her tits, before he passes on over.”  
  
Julan passed by with a bucket. “Maybe they’re limpid!”  
  
“Do you want me to sing this or not?!  
  
”'Give me the hair from off thy head, no more shalt thou need beauty.  
And feed it to the rav'nous flame, that death may shirk its duty.’  
My fingers loosed my long blonde hair, in hanks and fistfuls tearing,  
And fed it to the rav'nous flame, to stop death from him snaring.“  
  
Ire had closed his eyes, the better to pretend he was still alone. He saw, instead, the main room of his parents’ small cottage that served as kitchen, dining and living room. The fireplace, hung with fishing charms and strange nautical gewgaws his superstitious father couldn’t bear to part with. His parents standing before the hearth, arm in arm, he tall, lean and weathered as a mast, she smaller and plumper, with the same soft brown hair as Iriel, though her eyes were piercing green. His mother sang the girl’s part, high and crystalline, while his father’s gentle smoky baritone supplied that of the dead lover. He had kept this memory, he supposed, because it was his only proof that they had, at one time, enjoyed each other’s company. Aside from his own existence, which, by all accounts, had been a surprise to everyone involved.  
  
”'Give me the blood from out thy veins, no more shalt thou need kinship.  
And feed it to the rav'nous flame, that death may let my life slip.’  
I raised my dagger to my wrist, and cut my skin to bleeding,  
And fed it to the rav'nous flame, to stop death on him feeding.“  
  
"This is getting nasty.”  
  
He opened his eyes to see Julan, leaning on the mop, mouth twisted in consternation. Ire smiled, beginning to enjoy himself. “Can’t you handle a little blood, a warrior like you? The next verse is even better.”  
  
“'Give me a tooth from out thy mouth, no more shalt thou need wisdom.  
And feed it to the rav'nous flame, to win me from death’s kingdom.’  
I snatched a stone from off the ground and struck my jaw to breaking,  
And fed it to the rav'nous flame, to stop death from him taking.”  
  
“She knocked her own tooth out? Ire, this song is horrible!” Julan was appalled, but Tilde was laughing. “I like this girl,” she cackled, “she’s a right hard-arse, she is. Are you sure she’s not from Riften?”  
  
Ire flapped his hands at them. “Shhh, there’s only one more verse.  
  
"The dawn broke hard upon the ash, my hands were barren and blistered.  
His flick'ring form, it faded fast, one last sweet nothing he whispered.  
'Alas, my dove, thy toil’s in vain, but cease thy lamentation,  
For proved thy love thou hast to me, and are freed from all obligation.’”  
  
“Whaaat?” Sottilde sat up, and slapped a hand onto the table. “After all that, nothing happened? He was just messin’ with her, to see if she’d do it? He knew it’d never work?”  
  
“Of course not,” sniffed Ire. “This is an Altmeri folk song. Death is, officially, a far more preferable state to living, however nice your girlfriend’s tits are. Trying to get people back from Aetherius is usually considered the height of rudeness and inconsideration. But you can tell the girl’s a wrong 'un from the way she badmouths the stars in the first verse, according to my pa. It’s a cautionary tale, or so he always said. Ma didn’t agree, she swore it was very romantic. She used to say it was about how far you’d be willing to go for someone, and what you’d be willing to sacrifice. It didn’t matter that the girl failed, she used to say, what mattered was that she proved her love.”  
  
“What about you?” asked Julan. “What do you think?”  
  
Iriel smirked. “If you want my opinion,” he said, “it’s about how you can literally tear yourself apart, trying to give someone what they claim to need, in order for them to stay with you, but all they’ll really do is keep taking and taking, until you’re naked, ugly and bleeding, at which point they’ll go 'haha, just kidding’ and leave anyway.”  
  
“That so?” Sottilde came over and elbowed him in the ribs, giggling. “So,” she said, pointing from Iriel to Julan and back again. “Which one of you’s the masochistic necromancer, and who’s the perverted dead guy?”  
  
When Julan had stopped chasing Tilde around with the mop, he sank into a chair, looking pensive. “If the song’s about anything,” he said slowly, “maybe it’s about the dead, and what they need from us. What she’s doing, in the song, it’s not a life ritual. No wonder it doesn’t work. It’s a death ritual all along. We use bones in the rites, to guide the person’s soul away from their body and into the ghostline. And cutting hair, tearing clothes and weeping are mourning rituals. Sometimes people will even stand in the smoke, to make their eyes water, if they can’t cry. So they can still give tears to the dead.”  
  
Ire frowned. “I always thought all that performative grieving was more for the living, than the dead. Do the dead really want tears from us, or anything at all? Or is it the living who want to force themselves into as much pain as possible, because it makes them feel better? Perhaps it helps get rid of the guilt of being left behind, of failing to save someone, of not doing enough for them when they were alive.”  
  
“You know what I’d want from the dead, if I were her?” Sottilde raised her voice, concerned the conversation was turning too philosophical. “I’d want revenge on that corpse-ass bastard! He’d be thanking the gods he was already dead, if that’d been me, I can tell you! Gimme my tooth back, ya mouldy old wormface! I’m gonna find where you died, and I’m gonna fuck your hotter younger brother on your brother-fuckin’ grave!”  
  
“Wonderful.” Ire looked around for his bag. “You get to work on a new verse for that part, then. I have to go and see Cosades.”  
  
“Shor’s balls! What time is it?” Tilde looked around, wildly. “I’m due to be on bar when we open, and I still need to take Habasi’s goddamn delivery! Back in a few!” She bounded up the stairs, and they heard the front door slam a moment later.  
  
“Well,” Julan had put the mop away, and was coming towards him, stretching the cricks out of his spine. “I guess I’ll come with you, then. I want to meet this mysterious Imperial.”  
  
Iriel, leaning a hand on the table, felt his palms become slick with sweat. He straightened up before he fell over, mind cycling through the possible excuses he’d stockpiled for this eventuality. The problem, he knew, was less their inherent plausibility, and more the way his aura of terrified guilt would make anything he said sound suspicious. “Isn’t it better if you stay here?” he faltered. “You can mind the bar until Sottilde gets back.”  
  
“It’s fine, we can lock the door again.”  
  
“I’m only dropping in for a moment, it’s really not worth your while coming.”  
  
“I could use a walk in the fresh air. And I told you, I want to see what he’s like. I’ve only seen him at a distance, in the street. I’m very curious what his interest is in… you know. My mission.”  
  
“He won’t want me bringing strangers in. He’s very private.”  
  
“You said the other day he was talking about getting you to interview an Ashlander next, so you can tell him I’m here for that, can’t you?”  
  
“I… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”  
  
“Why not?” Julan’s voice had a steely edge to it.  
  
Iriel didn’t answer.  _Why in fucking Oblivion did anyone think I was capable of being any kind of secret agent?!_  
  
Panicked, he launched into the traditional defensive tactic of a besieged conscience: flaming projectiles. “Julan, why the fuck would he want to speak to you, he’s a historian, not a bored barmaid. He has his own Ashlander contacts, he doesn’t need random outcasts I happen to have picked up along the road. You probably don’t even know all the right tribal cultural context, anyway!”  
  
It was a cheap shot, aimed squarely where he knew it would hurt, but it was all he had left. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Julan’s eye, but he knew from the brittle texture of the silence that he’d landed a direct hit.  _Good. Perhaps it’ll be enough to let me get out of here without any furth–_  
  
“I know how you met him,” Julan said, sharply, suddenly. “Sottilde told me. She’s worried about you, too. She told me you came to her begging for a new skooma dealer, and she gave you his address, because he always seemed to have so much. She feels guilty about that, now. Because lately, you can’t stay away, and you’re lying about why. So. What’s  _really_  going on between you and Cosades?”  
  
Iriel almost told him everything, then, damn the Spymaster and damn the Emperor, he didn’t care enough about their disapproval or their threats to sacrifice everything else in his life to them. But there was something new in Julan’s voice now, seething beneath his words, like maggots under the skin, and in a moment of cold, slimy realisation, Iriel knew what it was. __  
  
“How fucking dare you.” Ire made for the door, the inevitable tears that sprang into his eyes only increasing his fury. “I’m going out. You will stay the fuck here, and when she gets back, you will tell Sottilde from me she had no right to repeat that conversation to you. And later, when I get back, you can explain why you think you have the fucking right to judge me without proof.”  
  
The door didn’t slam behind him properly, so he was forced to kick it as hard as he could.


	102. count

Caius Cosades was in an irritatingly good mood, waxing loquacious about Morrowind’s history and culture, immune to Iriel’s waspishness. He laughed at Ire’s complaint that his friends now thought he was trading his body for skooma.  
  
“Let them! I’ve heard worse cover stories,” he said, appraising him with a sardonic smirk that left Ire in no doubt Cosades would choose the skooma any day. Ire found it hard to take offence.  
  
“Could you at least start answering the door fully dressed?” he pleaded.

It was late when Ire returned to the South Wall, and the noise as he descended the stairs told him the bar was busy. Indeed it was, filled with a multitude of faces both familiar and unknown. He couldn’t see Julan anywhere, but Sottilde spotted him from her place behind the bar, and waved vigorously. To his surprise, she looked positively angry, the mask of unshakeable cheer she habitually wore while tending bar clearly coming loose.  
  
“Ire!” she bawled across the crowd, “Get over here and get your goddamn wreck of a boyfriend out from under my feet!”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“I just told you!”  
  
Ire elbowed his way through the sea of bodies and leaned over the bar. Julan was lying on the floor behind it, his expression suffused with vacant melancholia and his shirt suffused with mazte.  
  
Sottilde scowled down at him. “If you look up my skirts again, I’m going to kick you in the head again, deal?” She turned to Iriel, the whites of her eyes flashing like a horse about to buck. “You know me, Ire, I put up with a lot of liquored-up shenanigans in here. Ya gotta, right? People wanna have a good time. But Kyne’s tits, if he’d been anyone else, I'dda kicked him out long ago. So now you’re back, he’s your problem, not mine. You get him out of here in five minutes, I’ll even cover his damages outta my wages, ‘cause I’m a sap.”  
  
“Heeeey!” Julan had finally managed to focus on him, and was beaming sloppily. “You came back!”  
  
Hours of checking and rechecking the information in Cosades’ reports had considerably blunted the jaws of Iriel’s fury, leaving only toothless resignation. “Did you  _have_  to get quite so horribly drunk?” he sighed. “Again?”   
  
Julan’s face contorted with effort, as if his thoughts were ducklings he was trying to herd along a tightrope. “Yeah,” he said, after a while. “I don’ completely remember, but ’m pretty sure I did.”  
  
Ire hauled him onto a chair, with Sottilde’s help. “The rest of his stuff’s in the back room,” she said, pointing. “I had to take it all off him when he started playing silly buggers with his dagger.” Ire nodded, and moved to retrieve it.  
  
“Iiiiiiiyyyyyaaaa… come baaaaack! Don’ leave meeeee!”  
“I’m only getting your bag, let go of me!”  
“You’re coming back? Promise?”  
“If you promise not to fall off your bloody chair again while I’m gone.”  
  
“…’m sorry… i fell off… please still come back…”  
  
“I’m here, aren’t I? Come on, stand up, your bed’s upstairs. Hold on to my arm. Mind your head on the table.”  
  
“Iyaaa… ’m sorry I fell onna floor after you told me not to. An’… an’ all the other things I do an’ say all the time tha’ you don’ wan’ me to. I’m sorry I keep doing… things. Sayin’ things tha’ make you mad… You were right about… about stuff. I don’ know wha I’m doing. I don’ know wha’ I want. 'Cept you… You’re so smart an’… standing up all so high like that, an…”  
  
“Shhh. Focus on walking. Gods, how many have you had?”  
  
“’m sorry. Quiiiiite a lots. Where we going?”  
  
“I told you, back to our room. It’s up these stairs, come on. No, lift your whole leg, or it won’t work.”  
  
“You taking me to bed again?”  
  
“Yes, but you can wipe that grin off. Not like  _that_ , I’m not.”  
  
“Iyyyyaaa, you’re cute when you’re angry.”  
  
“I’m about to get a lot fucking cuter, then. I’m poised right on the brink of becoming  _unbelievably_ attractive.”  
  
“Awww… c'mon Iya, lemme make it up to you. Give you a night you won’ forget in a hurry.”  
  
“You already did, trust me. Neither will Tilde, and you owe her a new pair of shoes, by the way. Heeeere we go, lie down.”  
  
“C'mere, you n'wah! I’m gonna… something your… someth…”  
  
Iriel ignored Julan’s hamfisted attempts to pull him down onto the bed, concentrating on yanking the mazte-soaked shirt over his head. He hadn’t even got Julan’s boots off before he had, as Iriel had known perfectly well he would, fallen fast asleep.  
  
  
Ire dreamed of masks and gold, of smiles, meaningless words and gentle touches that filled him with incomprehensible dread. Then the vision morphed into one of his regular illusion magic anxiety dreams, in which he had somehow managed to paralyse and silence himself, and couldn’t remember how to dispel it. Then the masked figure again, talking to him again in that blandly pleasant monotone… except now, he detected an undertone of hurt betrayal.  
  
The figure began to remove its mask, and he suddenly knew it would be Kaye’s face under it. So it was, and in that moment, he realised he was dreaming.   
  
Ohhh, so it’s one of those dreams where people keep on taking endless masks off, how wonderful. I suppose it’ll be Anarenen next… yes, there we go. And now… oh, Hiranel, really? Still?   
  
As his ex-lover’s pallid eyes began to tear and distort, Ire knew, with all the groundless conviction of dream, that his father’s face would be next. He couldn’t bear it.  _Please, no. Don’t make him look at me. Make it stop, this is my mind, why can’t I control it?_  
  
But it wasn’t, it was a different face, burned almost beyond recognition, and the horror of it woke him, gasping and blinking sightlessly in the dark. But he was already unable to remember what he’d seen, only the fear still echoed through him. He fell into a disjointed, dozing pattern, slipping beneath the surface and out again, like a skipped stone.   
  
Julan, in the grey dawn, in the liminal hyper-reality between drunkenness and hangover, woke him, grinding against him, breath hot on his neck. Sick of dodging the pitfalls of his unconscious, Ire responded eagerly, thankful for a chance to wordlessly reconcile some of the hostility that lately seemed to rise and fall between them in endless waves. Afterwards, Julan clung to him like a limpet, as if he’d be swept away as soon as he let go.  
  
“Iya… Iya, I lov–”  
“Shhh! Don’t say that.”  
“Why not?”  
“Because it doesn’t count.”  
“Why not?”  
“Because one, you’re still drunk, and two, you just came. Nothing anyone says immediately before or after orgasm counts for anything.”  
“Why not?”  
“It just doesn’t. Ask anyone.”  
“Then nothing you say counts either.”  
“Oh, fuck off.”  
“And… if nothing counts, I can say it, because it doesn’t matter.”  
“It does matter. That’s why you shouldn’t.”  
  
_…me too. it doesn’t count, I’ll deny everything, but… me too_.

Sometimes, later, he wished he’d said it anyway. More often, he was glad he hadn’t.


	103. hand

There was something in the air of Ald'ruhn making Iriel tight-chested, and it wasn’t the ashstorm. That really didn’t help, though. Shielding his face, he shuffled blindly down from the silt strider port and headed towards the Rat in the Pot.

He didn’t even realise he was invisible until someone bumped into him. The Dunmer man turned, readying a volley of abuse, then looked straight through him and moved on, shaking his head. Ire stood there, trying to regain his equilibrium, blaming the ashstorm for the confusion, until he noticed he literally couldn’t see his hand in front of his face any more.  
  
_Oops. I don’t remember casting that. But… when I lived here, I used to make myself invisible every time I had to go anywhere. It was the only way I could cope. I haven’t needed to do that in a while. Perhaps this is some sort of… psycho-geographically triggered magical muscle memory._  
  
He let the spell lapse and watched his hand shimmer into focus. A nearby Redoran guard turned, startled, the faceless bonemold helm swivelling in his direction. Ire felt the air leave his lungs, his ribcage clenching like a fist _._  
  
_Apparently I’m not as over it as I thought. I suppose it’s being alone that does it. Gods, how pathetic is that? I refuse to accept that I can’t function without someone else to hide behind!_  
  
Julan had remained in Balmora, muttering something about a prior arrangement to practise archery with Arathor. Iriel suspected it had more to do with the identity of Cosades’ Ashlander contact, although he wasn’t sure exactly what. He had, as a show of good faith, invited Julan along to the interview, so that he might hear the questions and offer his own perspective. Julan had been keen, until the name of the gentleman in question had come up.  
  
“Zainsubani?! It’s not Adibael Zainsubani, is it?”  
  
“No, it began with an H. Hold on, I wrote it down. Hassour. Hassour Zainsubani.”  
  
“Sheogorath. I think that’s his brother. Still not good.”  
  
“You know him? I did think I’d heard the name somewhere, but I couldn’t place it.”  
  
“Oh… no. Actually, I think I’m getting him confused with someone else. Never mind.”  
  
At this point, he’d ‘remembered’ about the archery date, and Ire had been flummoxed by his sudden enthusiasm reversal. “So… you’re quite happy for me to spend a day in Ald'ruhn on my own?” he’d enquired. “I thought it was a den of drug-fuelled iniquity, and I needed to be protected from myself.”  
  
Julan had looked torn, causing Ire to snort. “You still don’t trust me? Really? As soon as I’m parted from you, I’m going to descend into a skooma-crazed wreck, is that it? Let me remind you which of us keeps collapsing on tavern floors, when left unattended.”  
  
“Look, I… OK, maybe that’s fair… but… are you sure you don’t need–”  
  
“You to come and hold my hand? No! I’ll be perfectly all right without you for a day! Sweetheart… you know I enjoy your company, but don’t you think it’s healthier for us to have some time apart once in a while? I’ll be back the same night, in any case. I promise I’ll take care of myself, and in return,  _you_ can promise not to drink while I’m gone.”  
  
Barely off the strider and already feeling himself unravelling, Ire hoped Julan was doing better at his end of the deal than he was.  
  
He continued onward,  telling himself he was being ridiculous, trying to ignore the constant low-level whine of panic in his brain. Passing the Mages’ Guild, he was struck by the possibility of seeing Anarenen, or even Edwinna. He resigned himself to his own ridiculousness, after that, and remained invisible until he reached the bar.  
  
Cosades knew that Zainsubani was in town, but not where he could be found, suggesting that he ask the locals. Which was easy for him to say, Ire thought.   
  
_Just talk to people, Ire, just go up to complete strangers and make intelligible noises from your mouth-hole at them, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing to do. Right. Sure._  
  
At least in the Rat, there would be familiar faces, even if they were mostly familiar to him through a melting, hallucinogenic haze.  
  
Lirielle Stoine smiled brightly at him from behind the bar, and wiped her hands on her apron. “Hello, stranger. Long time, no see. What can I get you today?”  
  
Ire knew her friendliness arose from his previous status as her best skooma customer. He felt irrationally guilty about disappointing her with his current sobriety. “Nothing today, thank you. Do you know of an Ashlander named Hassour Zainsubani?”  
  
“I don’t, I’m afraid. Aengoth’s downstairs, you could ask him.”  
  
“No need for that.” The Bosmer woman sitting at the end of the bar turned towards him. “I know the f'lah you want.” She grinned at Iriel, sharp black eyebrows arching over sharp black eyes in private amusement. Her close-cropped hair was black too, as were her clothes. She reminded Iriel of a bird, the kind that sits on cliff-edges, waiting for something to die, so it can peck its eyes out. Sometimes, perhaps, it gets tired of waiting. “Why don’t you come and sit with me, over in the back. We haven’t had a chance to talk yet, have we, Iriel?”  
  
“Let me guess. Gildan, correct?” He had allowed her to buy him a shein, although he hadn’t touched it.  
  
She smiled again, eyes creasing into tiny laughter lines. “Got it in one. I work for the big C, same as you. Isn’t it sad that I spent so much time watching you, and never even got to say hello?”  
  
“Tragic.”  
  
“Now, now, don’t be sore. All in the job, right? In any case, me doing my job means I can help you do yours. Hassour Zainsubani’s at the Ald Skar Inn. He’s a retired trader, with a big family home out in the sticks, but you’ll find him at the Ald Skar when he’s in town. His brother prefers the Rat.”  
  
“I was told I should find a gift for him, as a show of respect. Have you any idea what he’d like?”  
  
“He spends a lot of time in the bookstore, so he must be into his letters, which is a bit rum, for an Ashland sort. I’m not so all up in his business that I know what he likes sticking his bookmark into, though.”  
  
“Thank you.” He was about to leave, but hesitated. He hadn’t met another of Cosades’ agents before. “How long have you worked for… C?”  
  
“Oooh…” She puffed up her cheeks and expelled air slowly through pursed lips. “A year? A bit longer? I got moved over from Cyrodiil. I mostly report on the Redoran, and their argy-bargy with the other Houses. Mind-blowing, right? Keeping tabs on you was the closest thing to fun I’ve had in ages. Sure you don’t wanna drop off the map again?”  
  
“Not right now. Sorry to disappoint.” He leaned his elbows on the table and regarded her through a lattice of fingers. “I have to ask… is he really an addict? I find it hard to believe he could function as well as he seems to, and yet… I’m sure it’s not entirely an act. There are certain physical signs it would be difficult to fake.”  
  
Gildan shrugged. “Why not ask him yourself? It’s not my job to keep tabs on  _him_ , is it?”  
  
Ire’s fingers twitched. “I’m quite aware of the invasive nature of the question, but considering the degree of power he has over me, I think I have a right to wonder.”  
  
“All I can tell you is that he takes his job very seriously. And that goes for his cover identity, as well. He’s nothing if not methodical. But if he uses sugar… well. I said it right there, didn’t I? He uses sugar. Old Caius uses lots of things. Knows his tool kit inside out, he does. As in, he’s using it, but he’s also  _usi_ –”  
  
“Yes, I understand your meaning, thank you.” He left Gildan cackling to herself, and drinking his shein.  
  
  
The Ald Skar Inn was crawling with the early evening crowd. Ire’s horror was slightly tempered by the sight of a particular table in the back, invoking memories of being lectured about Ashlanders while trying to study Dwemer texts.  
  
_Gods, that was only a few months ago. Since then, I’ve made far more progress with the boy than I have with the books. Let’s hope this interview is the last thing Cosades wants from me for a while, and I can focus on my research again._  
  
Iriel had difficulty picturing himself too far into the future, and in any case considered it a dangerously optimistic hobby. Despite himself, though, he had, of late, been slipping into occasional flights of fancy. They tended to involve small mage towers, far away from cities, crowds, tribes, blighted guar and meddling mothers. They involved books, and the reading and possibly writing of them. They definitely didn’t involve larceny, espionage, prophecies, or too much external responsibility of any kind. They didn’t even involve pocket dimensions. They didn’t usually involve summoned Daedra or Steam Centurions either, but… sometimes, he wasn’t alone.  
  
Zainsubani was holding court in a private room of the bar, surrounded by a dozen other Dunmer men - merchants and traders, judging by the snatches of conversation Ire could overhear. There were evidently popular trends and fashions in high-end Dunmeri travelwear, as all the men looked the same to Iriel’s eye. Morning Star, it seemed, called for short capes with tasselled fringes, and swathing striped layers, ending in racerskin boots with buckles.  
  
Zainsubani was dressed no differently, but his Ashlander heritage was evident in his facial tattoos, multiple piercings, and the beads in his long, greying hair. He also had an extremely loud and strident laugh that reminded Ire of a territorial nix hound.  
  
He hovered outside the room, risking only occasional glances around the doorframe.  _Why doesn’t this get any easier? They’re just people, but by every Aedra, I’d sooner fall to my death clawed by a hundred diseased Khajiit than walk into that room. Julan could handle this so easily, or Sottilde, or… anyone, probably. Why are these things only difficult for me? What am I even afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen?_  
  
He thought about his experiments with Calm and Rally spells. The former had its uses, but turned him into a social zombie, blinking and monosyllabic. The latter felt like snorting fire salts directly into his brain. He’d tried it in the bathroom, once, and almost smashed the mirror because he wanted to murder his own face. He was now completely terrified of casting it again.  
  
_Stop thinking about the worst that could happen, Ire, it’s really not helping._  
  
_…Fuck it, I need some air._  
  
Outside, he wandered aimlessly through the ash-filtered dusk, torn between missing Julan horribly and cursing himself for his hopeless dependency. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.  _Julan would never have let that slide. Gods, have I been relying on him to feed me, even? Get a grip, Iriel._  
  
He went to the bookstore, reasoning he might find a suitable gift for Zainsubani, but only succeeded in working himself deeper into the fear. Present buying was always fraught with imagined complications, and with so little to go on, the pitfalls were endless. There was a small selection of Ashlander-themed books, but  _surely it would be insulting to offer an expert a basic volume he’d read a thousand times? Wouldn’t the act of offering a book about Ashlanders be offensive in itself, implying this is literally the only thing I know about him, and I’m defining him solely by that identity? But it IS literally the only thing I know about him, I have absolutely nothing else to go on! Oh, there’s a lovely book about mushrooms here. How could anyone not enjoy a book about mushrooms? Look at those gills, they’re adorable. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that people are opaque and unpredictable, and my tastes are bizarre and unrepresentative. Auri-El, how does anyone ever buy presents for anyone without dying from the stress of it?_  
  
He was eventually pushed out of the shop at closing time by the tired proprietor, and found himself, empty-handed and fretful, in the street once more.  
  
He thought about the Ald Skar Inn, which would only be busier at this hour. He evaluated his current capacity for social interaction, which was zero. Worse, he could feel himself receding from his surroundings. The numb was setting in.  
  
He supposed that, in its way, it was a defence mechanism. After all, he couldn’t panic and go numb at the same time. Everything drained away from him: fears, frustrations, words - his inner monologue slowing from a torrent to a trickle. It was as if his brain realised he couldn’t be trusted to run an identity in this condition, and temporarily revoked his licence, shutting down all non-essential functions.  
  
He wished someone were there to hold his hand. A warm press of skin to skin, a bloom of activated nerves, an anchor to catch, and grip. But there was only the ash below, the stars above and the textureless shadows between.  
  
His hand, seeking solidity, touched embroidered cloth in his pocket. Very well, he was incapable of being a person. Not all jobs required personhood. In fact, for some tasks, his rapidly diminishing contact with reality might be an advantage. Abandoning form in favour of function, Iriel dissolved into the night.


	104. delivery

Braynas Hlervu, retired farmer, looked up from a letter he was painstakingly writing to his only living relation, a nephew in Maar Gan. He knew his ears weren’t the sharpest, but he could have sworn he heard something outside. It was almost midnight, though, and his pauper’s shack was on the far edge of Ald'ruhn, close to the wastes.   
  
He creaked upright, muttering to himself. “B'vek! If them nix hounds are in my yam patch again, they’ll feel the end of my hoe!” He took the implement in question in his right hand, a lantern in his left and hobbled outside.

“Scram, fetchers!” he rasped into the night air, holding up the lantern, and shaking the hoe. “Damn pointy n'wahs get away from my vegetables!”  
  
There was a squeal, a scuffling collapsing noise, and the sound of someone scrabbling for purchase in the ash. “I really have no desire to interfere with your vegetables,” Iriel pouted. “You should tell them to stop interfering with  _me_.”  
  
He crawled into the pool of light, grimy and bedraggled from hours spent searching the vaults and strongrooms of Venim Manor, and minutes spent tripping over yams. “Are you Braynas Hlervu?”  
  
“That I am.” The old Dunmer looked as taken aback to see an Altmer in his garden as if it had been Sheogorath himself. “What’s yer business wi’ me, then?”  
  
Ire struggled to his feet, and dug into his pocket. When he held out his palm to Braynas, it contained a small golden locket, inscribed with the Daedric  _hekem_ character. “Is this yours?”  
  
The old man stared at it in wonder. “Almsivi be praised. It’s mine, right enough. But how…?” His fingers moved hesitantly towards it, as if it might vanish. He was right; it did.  
  
“Wait!” Ire jerked his hand away, panic in his eyes. “I’m doing this all wrong! I’m supposed to… hang on…” He began rummaging in his pockets again, this time producing a pair of black and red gloves, which he attempted to wriggle his hands into, juggling the locket from one to another. Inevitably, he soon dropped it into the ash, and had to fumble for it on his knees.  
  
Finally, he retrieved it, and offered it, again, to its owner, who was staring at Iriel as if he were several scribs short of an eggmine. “Are ye sure ye’re giving it to me, then?”  
  
“Yes! That’s the whole point!” Ire looked down at his hand again. The thumb felt rather awkward. “Oh, blighted fuck, my gloves are on the wrong hands. Is that all right, do you think?” He gazed at Braynas beseechingly.  
  
Braynas cleared his throat, and glanced around, as if a sane person might turn up to rescue him at any moment. “I’m sure yer hands are fine, lad,” he said, cautiously. “I’ll be taking this now, yes?”  
  
“Please.”  
  
“Wait!” Ire’s hand clenched into a nervous fist, almost crushing Braynas’ fingers. “I have to tell you something, first! I have to tell you I’m a Bal Molagmer! I return this to you as a gift, in the name of the Bal Molagmer!”  
  
“Molag Bal who now? Are ye a cultist or sommat?” Braynas’ expression implied that might explain a lot.  
  
Ire shook his head frantically. “No, no. Bal Molagmer. Completely different. Well, similar etymologies, but–”  
  
“What were the Molag Balmer doing with my family’s locket? I gave it to the Council, to pay off me tax-debt.”  
  
“Well, yes, that’s true. Literally speaking, I broke into Venim Manor and stole it back for you. But metaphorically speaking, it’s important that you understand it’s a gift from the Bal Molagmer.”  
  
“Why? Why does some fancy-gloved f'lah care if old Braynas gets his great, great granny’s necklace back or not?”  
  
Ire’s shoulders slumped, exasperated. “Oh gods. Don’t ask me. Something to do with justice and light and throwing flaming rocks down mountains. I should have brought my boyfriend, he could explain it all much better. Honestly, if you want  _my_ opinion, I think my boss is trying to foster support against the Camonna Tong among native Dunmer, and thinks this sort of thing makes for good propaganda. Anyway, I really must go. Remember: the Bal Molagmer. Tell your friends. If you have any. Not that I’m implying you don’t… um… The Bal Molagmer. Understood?”  
  
“The Bal Molagmer.”  
  
“Right.” Iriel turned, and melted into the night.  
  
“Can’t I have me locket, then?”  
  
“Fuck! Sorry!” Iriel unmelted (coagulated?) out of the night, stuffed the thing into the old man’s hand, and remelted into the night. Again.  
  
  
  
Ire skulked, filthy and exasperated, through Ald'ruhn towards the Rat in the Pot. He’d try Zainsubani again in the morning, when he would hopefully have fewer spectators and a better frame of mind.  
  
Most of the squat, dome-shaped dwellings were dark, but one doorway stood open and red-lit. A woman waited there, silhouetted against the warm, crimson glow. She looked casual, expectant, and Ire wasn’t surprised when she called out a greeting to him in a soft Dunmeri purr.  
  
“No thank you,” he said, quickening his pace.  
  
“Wait!” Her voice was Velothi-accented. “I have a message for you.”  
  
It wasn’t impossible that someone was trying to contact him, and he made the mistake of hesitating, of doubling back. “Who from?”  
  
She shook her head. “Not on the street. Come inside.” This was still within the bounds of reasonability, for Iriel’s life, so he came closer.  
  
In the light of the doorway, her face was high-cheekboned and narrow, hair falling dark and poker-straight down her shoulders. She was wearing something long, almost robe-like, and carried no weapon that Iriel could see.  
  
The room behind her seemed unoccupied, though Ire couldn’t see the source of the light. There was also an unpleasantly familiar smell. He remained stubbornly on the threshold as she stepped backwards, smiling seductively. Her eyes were very red, very bright, and they never left his face.  
  
“I bring you a message from the true Lord and Father of Morrowind,” she said. “It is the Hour of Wakening. Dagoth Ur awakes, and comes forth in his glory, and his people shall rejoice, and his enemies shall scatter like dust.”  
  
“Oh gods.” Ire was already turning away. “No. Absolutely not. Find someone else to–”  
  
He stopped. Four tough-looking Dunmer surrounded the door, carrying large crates between them. “Out of my way, n'wah,” growled one, and Iriel jumped backwards into the room before he was trampled.  
  
“Hanarai,” said another, “Got a delivery for Guvron. Pass them on, will you? He’s not home. If he asks why it’s late, tell him the Gnaar Mok coast was crawling with trouble, and we were almost to the Koal Cave before we found a safe place to land.”  
  
They dropped the wooden crates to the floor, ignoring the look of fury on the woman’s face. Iriel saw rows of small, identical red statuettes inside, and his stomach lurched, because he knew where he’d seen them before. In St Delyn, in the foetid shrine of the unhinged cultists. Then he recognised the smell of rotting, diseased flesh, and only paralysing terror kept him from vomiting.  
  
Observing his reaction, Hanarai stepped neatly up behind him and seized his wrists, pinning them at his back. She was slightly built and far shorter than he was, yet the strength of her grip was astounding. Unnatural, even, but Iriel didn’t register that. The feeling of despair and helplessness that washed over him as his arms were immobilised had been drilled into him during his time in the Imperial Prison.  
  
He struggled through the memories, trying to focus on his real predicament, but unfortunately, that also fully warranted despair and helplessness. He felt himself beginning to shake, and his voice emerged unsteadily: “You’re the Sixth House.  _That’s_  what you’re smuggling? Why? What are they? What do you want?”  
  
The lead smuggler sighed. “Don’t reckon we’re getting a tip tonight, boys.”   
  
Hanarai’s voice came seething from behind Iriel. “Fools! Thanks to you, I have to deal with this vassith n'wah and what he knows!”  
  
“Want us to take him back out with us, and put him in the ash for you, all quiet-like?”  
  
She hesitated long enough that Ire’s vision began to cloud, and his ears to buzz, but as his knees gave out from under him, she said, “No. Leave him to me. I have a better idea.”  
  



	105. gift

Iriel lay on his stomach in the basement shrine of a Sixth House cultist, the earth floor cold against his cheek. His hands and feet were tightly bound. His head was pressed uncomfortably against the base of a wrought iron… well, you might call it a coat-rack, if by “coats”, you actually meant “lumps of decaying flesh”. There was a makeshift gag in his mouth, but she needn’t have bothered, really. Once the immediate, adrenalised horror had faded from his bloodstream, he’d been left only with dull, hollow futility.

 _I’m going to die. Probably soon, and certainly horribly. This is likely the worst situation I’ve ever been in. I should be terrified, and I am, but then, I’m terrified so much of the time, I’ve become acclimatised to it. I have to keep reminding myself that now, it’s actually justified. I’m allowed to feel scared and sad. My emotions are, for once, ‘normal’. Yay, me._  
  
Hanarai knelt before an altar, a few feet away. She was naked, with strange marks and lesions visible on her body in the red candlelight. Irregular, jagged scars and tumorous growths that squirmed and pulsated beneath her skin. She’d been chanting in a guttural monotone for several minutes, the syllables from no language Iriel recognised. He wasn’t even sure it  _was_ a language. She alternated this with a melodic, nasal humming phase, during which she would repeat the same pattern of tones, over and over. The pattern obviously mattered, because every so often she would get a note wrong, and curse under her breath in Velothi, before repeating it correctly.  
 _  
_ _I wish I could tell Julan I’m sorry for mocking his constant desire to be a hero and rescue people. Because if he turned up to rescue me right now, I’d ask him to marry me. But that isn’t going to happen.  
  
_ She was whispering something now, over and over, fast and low: “…the dreamer is awake… the dreamer is awake… the dust is blown away… the dust is blown away… the sixth house is risen, and dagoth is its glory…”  
 _  
I hope it’ll be quick. Not too much pain. It’s so stupid that I’m more worried about_ _ _the pain of dying than about_ death itself. But then, death is unknown to me; pain isn’t. Please let it be oblivion, I can’t deal with any other possibility._  
  
Hanarai stopped chanting and humming. She became very still, each muscle rigidly tensed. Then, her whole body convulsed, her arms rising awkwardly into the air, as if drawn up by puppet-strings. She was facing away from him, so he couldn’t be sure if her eyes were open or closed, but she seemed to have lost all awareness of Iriel, and the rest of her surroundings.  
  
 _Perhaps that’s why she tied the ropes so tight._  He squirmed again, but there was no give whatsoever. His hands and feet were going numb from lack of circulation.  
  
 _Numb. I was numb earlier tonight. Why can’t I have that back now, when it could comfort me, help me separate myself from my body and the awful things that are about to happen to it? Could I get it back? I’ve never tried to go numb on purpose, but perhaps I should start._  
  
From the floor, he saw Hanarai, lost in her dream-trance, take up a knife from the altar, and plunge it into a sore on her arm. Blood and pus dripped out, which she caught in a redware bowl.  
  
“Master! Lord Dagoth! I bring you a gift! Sing your dream into me and through me, that I may bring your divine ecstasy to this n'wah! Let him taste the glorious world you are creating, let him feel it in his flesh! Let him know he can never be a part of your beautiful dream, even as it tears him asunder. Let him put out his eyes, realising he could never weep enough for the lack of it!”  
  
Her wound was already healing over, a bulging mass swelling into its place.  _That’s… corprus! She has corprus!_ He stared at the redware bowl. There was a spoon in it. He would have screamed, but the gag was finally serving its purpose. He turned his face to the floor, trying to shut it out, shut everything out, run away, get as far inside himself as he could, until–  
  
  
  
“Until what?” Hassour Zainsubani leaned forwards on his cushion. “How did you get out?”  
  
Iriel stared down at the hearthrug, and took another burning mouthful of Cyrodiilic brandy. “I can only tell you what I already told the guards: I don’t remember.”  
  
“How can you not remember? Truly, you were conscious when the guards found you in the street, for we all heard you shrieking like a stuck kagouti!”  
  
“I… I know, but… down there in the shrine, I… it was like I fainted, except… not mentally, but physically.”  
  
“Zanna?!” The old Ashlander spat out his pipe. “How can it be one and not the other?”  
  
“I… can’t explain it. It barely lasted for a split second. It’s… hazy, and what I remember, I can’t describe. I only remember the part after that.”  
  
“Speak it, then!”  
  
“Picking up the iron flesh-rack and hitting her with it.” Despite the roaring fire a few feet away, he shivered, and pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders. “I suppose I had my spells back by then, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.”  
  
“Back, you missed a piece. You were tied up! You wormed free, the knot gave, you cut it by some method?”  
  
In answer, Iriel put down his brandy, and held out his left wrist. Twine was still wrapped around it, looped and knotted tightly. Zainsubani took hold of the twine, pulled on it, checked the knot, examined how closely it still encircled Ire’s wrist. His brow furrowed. “Give me your other hand!”  
  
Obediently,  the blanket dropping away from his shoulders, Ire extended both. Zainsubani held them together, moving the twine, gauging the difference in size between Ire’s narrow wrists, and his angular, bony hands. “I do not understand.” he said eventually. “Without undoing the knot, impossible. A magic of some kind?”  
  
“I don’t know. It felt like I… fainted through them. That’s the only way I can describe it. I was scared, and I was trying to push myself back from my skin… but I know it’s not possible. I don’t know any spells like that.”  
  
“Perhaps you dislocated your thumbs by some method. You live, this is the important victory.”  
  
Iriel nodded wearily, unwilling to debate things he couldn’t explain any better himself. He knocked back the last of his brandy, and Zainsubani refilled it from the bottle beside him.  
  
“Thank you for letting them bring me in here,” Ire said, after a while. “I’m sorry I interrupted your party.”  
  
Zainsubani laughed his barking laugh, and Ire tried not to flinch. “No party, merely a regular evening gathering of colleagues. You needed a quiet place to recover your wits, and it was time for my fellows to seek their beds in any event.”  
  
“But you stayed.”  
  
“True.”  
  
“Why? I originally came here to speak to you, but you couldn’t know that. Please, it’s late, and I’ll be fine. You’re very kind, but I don’t want to be any trouble.”  
  
“I like trouble. And it’s not kindness keeps me here.”  
  
“Then what?”  
  
“Curiosity. You see… I could swear you are wearing my old tunic.”  
  
Ire looked down, automatically. He was wearing the cream and brown striped shirt he had been given in Ahemmusa camp. He almost laughed, finally remembering where he’d heard 'Zainsubani’ before. The brandy took over his brain for a moment. “I’ve brought you a gift,” he said. “It’s not from me, though.”   
  
Shuffling forwards on hands and knees, he planted a kiss on the cheek of the astonished Ashlander. “Shani sends her love.”  
  
After a few minutes, the landlady had to come down and glare at them, because Zainsubani was still laughing loudly enough to wake the dead.  
  
  



	106. conscience

“You must tell me all the news!” Zainsubani was still beaming. He hadn’t stopped since Iriel described his visit to Ahemmusa Camp. “I am an old man, and the journey to the Sheogorad Coast is long and disagreeable for me. I have owed my niece a visit far too long. The rest of the family live here, now. My brother Adibael, Shani’s father, finally moved to Ald'ruhn last year. He and my son Hannat travel for me, now that I am retired.”

They were on cushions by the fire in a private room of the Ald Skar Inn, and Ire was under his blanket again. “Shani seemed well, when I saw her,” he told the trader. “She saved my life, she tried to drug me, then she gave me a haircut. She tells me this means we’re friends.”  
  
“Ahh, that’s our Shanishilabi. Life is never dull, with her. Savedri shulli. I am so glad to hear she is making trouble once again. The last time I saw her was… almost two years ago? At that time she was not herself, and it grieved me.”  
  
“Not herself?”  
  
“Ai… young hearts are often bruised, but she’d taken a bad wound.” He swigged at his brandy, and gestured at the bottle to Ire, who shook his head politely. “She had introduced me to her boy the previous summer. She had asked me, then: Ilbabu Hassour, if we came to live in Ald'ruhn, would you give him a job with you? They wanted to marry, you see, but their parents forbade it, so they planned to leave the tribe. Do you see the impudence of this girl, to have me take her side against my own brother?”  
  
He was laughing again. “I would have done it, too! Not only for her sake. It would have eased my conscience to do something for the boy. Ai… but in the end, it all came to blood and ash, and she was inconsolable. Her father worried over her. He sent her to stay with my wife and I, to change her scenery. I told her, Shilabi, do not blame yourself. A boy like that, you cannot hope to… Gah, never mind.” Zainsubani broke off, sucking on his ebony pipe and sighing smoke until Ire could hardly see his face.  
  
“A boy like what, exactly? You cannot hope to what?” Ire had been trying to conceal his personal interest, but his success was waning rapidly.  
  
Zainsubani waved a hand, dismissing the smoke, and Ire’s questions. “Apologies, sera, I have had too much brandy, and it causes me to ramble about private family matters. You wish to know about the Nerevarine cult, I believe?”  
  
“Well… yes. That was my intention.”  
  
“I must tell you, you would do better to seek out the Urshilaku, in the Ashlands on the northern coast. The cult is of small consequence in Ashlander worship, and only among the Urshilaku do its followers have any influence. For myself, I well understand the impulse to worship Nerevar Moon-and-Star, and dream of his return. To see his reincarnation drive the foreigners from the Ashlands, cast down the false gods of the Temple, and restore the true worships of the Ancestors. Such a hero would appeal to every Ashlander, but it is thought but a silly ancient legend by many - myself and my tribe included. Pleasant to imagine, perhaps, but nothing to take seriously.” He smiled, shrugged, gestured expansively.  
  
“The Urshilaku, however, cherish prophecy and dream-seeing, and train their wise women from birth to enter trances, and seek out the hidden knowledge of the ancestors.” Clamping the ebony stem of the pipe between his teeth, he jiggled it up and down, staring into space, pensively. “In truth, I am not certain how much good it does them.”  
  
Ire frowned, puzzled by his shift in mood. “What exactly do you mean by that?”  
  
Zainsubani looked a touch embarrassed. “Gah, I am in no position to pass educated judgement on the Urshilaku. I have spent but little time in their camps. I am only thinking of an Urshilaku girl who lived among the Ahemmusa for a time. An odd, quiet thing, given to strange fixations and fancies.” He shook his head. “She never truly found a place there, and the next time I visited, she was gone, turned mabrigash, they told me.”  
  
Ire chewed his lip for a while. “You mean Mashti Kaushibael, don’t you?” he said. “And you were talking about Julan, before.”  
  
Zainsubani gave him a long, scrutinising look. He frowned, unable to come to any sort of conclusion, and gave up. Lapsing into vague bemusement, he poured himself more brandy. “You have me at a loss,” he admitted. “I cannot imagine what connection an outland Altmer could have with such people.”  
  
“If… if I tell you, will you explain what you meant when you said you wanted to ease your conscience about him?”  
  
“Ai… perhaps. It was long ago, after all.”  
  
“You go first, then.”  
  
“There is not so much to it. Julan’s father, Han-Sashael - he and I were comrades, from the same generation of Ahemmusa warriors. Friends… and rivals for the position of ashkhan, which he won from me. He married my wife’s sister shortly after. I left the tribe, I travelled, built my business, decades passed. But you will understand my feelings when, more then twenty years ago, he confided in me that he wished to set his wife aside for another. This eerie-eyed little Urshilaku girl he had picked up on a trading visit, a fraction of his age, and silent as stone.  
  
“Naturally, I told him he was a fool, to forget this infatuation, and if he could not, to send the girl home to the Urshilaku, that he would be mad to throw away all that he had. I did not learn, until after he had taken my advice, that the girl had already become pregnant. When next I visited, she had not returned home, but was living in isolation, an outcast, raising her boy in great poverty and deprivation. I tried to take her a gift of food, but she screamed, and threatened me with spells until I departed. Sashael refused to discuss it with me, and we parted with bitter words, the last threads of our friendship finally cut.  
  
"I heard fragments from Shani, over the years. She had befriended this Julan boy, to her parents’ dismay, and they became close. I gathered that he knew nothing of his father, and flew into a rage if it was mentioned, insisting he had none, needed none. It was not my place to tell him differently. But when I met him, there was a hollowness, clear and visible in him. You must understand, to my people, the tribe is everything. It is more than a family bond, our spirits are bound together, one ghostline, in life and death. A child born outside it… it is missing a limb, an organ. The rest of their soul. I live here now, but when I die, my soul will return to the Ahemmusa, and I will go home to my people. Outcasts have no home, in this world or the next.  
  
"From what Shani told me, after it ended, there was nothing she could have done to be enough for him. She was trying to be a whole tribe to him, and who could hope to do that? He needed far more than one person could give, and when she failed, he punished her for it. She deserved better. And so did he, I think, but Sashael is dead now, amid strange and doubtful rumours, and I will speak no ill of the dead. There now, I have spoken. Satisfy my curiosity, then: what is your interest in all this?”  
  
Ire hunched deeper into his blanket, chewing on what to say, and what to leave out. It would be difficult to explain the situation without revealing Julan’s Nerevarine delusions. But he had sworn himself to secrecy, and he dared to hope that Julan was already wavering on that front. He should probably make something up, something simple and plausible, keeping anything weird or personal out of it. Not his forté. He twisted his fingers together nervously.   
  
Zainsubani was drawing on his pipe again, and Ire found himself saying, “Why are you smoking that? What does it do?”  
  
“Kreshweed? A filthy city habit, according to my wife, but I find it relaxing.”  
  
“Relaxing  _does_ sound appealing right now.”  
  
Zainsubani smiled and passed him the pipe.  
  
  
“…so then we spent the rest of the night and a fair amount of the next day just  _wrecking_ each other in a Redoran bed and fucking breakfast, and, yes,  _fine_ , I suppose I love him now? Fuck. I haven’t even said that to  _him_. The thing is, the thing is… I’m scared. I mean, it’s fucking terrifying? Loving people, yes, obviously terrifying, although it’s also a relief to know that I’m still even  _capable_ of it, but, but also  _telling_ them you love them, because then they  _know_ that you love them, and that, that, you’re feeling things, horrible, vulnerable things, and that they have power over you, and they might start  _expecting_  things from you, like… like not fucking up, and not hurting them, and I’m already so bad at that, oh gods. And you’re  _right_ , he’s just so… empty, sometimes, I feel like if I  _start_  loving him, you know, in a way that he actually  _knows_ about, it’d be like pouring water into a bottomless pit, I could do it forever and it’d never be enough. But I should try, because, because… it’s not fair, it’s not fair that I want the feeling of him loving me, that I want to feel the power of that, without also giving it back to him, and letting him know it too, that he’s loved, because it’s true. And because we’ve only been apart a day, but already I  _do_  need him, I’ve fucked everything up on my own, and I really miss him, and I’m sorry I was awful to him about the Thing I Can’t Talk About because I think I understand better now why he does it, and gods I hope he’s not drinking again, he  _promised_. But I’ve been a shit, and I should apologise. Perhaps I should get him something… yes, I could do that, couldn’t I? I was supposed to get you a gift, you know, but I screwed it up, so I cheated. Shani didn’t really send her love, she had no idea I’d be seeing you, although perhaps she would, if she had. I kissed you under false pretences, I’m afraid. But Caius said Ashlanders were very concerned with gifts, it was this whole cultural… thing? Tell me, what’s the… the thing? About Ashlander gifts?”  
  
“The thing?” Zainsubani’s head had nodded forwards, but his eyes blinked open at Ire’s sudden direct question, after the endless ramble through the jungle of his monologue.  
  
“Yes! The… thing. How do Ashlanders give gifts?”  
  
The old trader yawned. “There is no great mystery to it. A gift is a sign of courtesy among strangers and affection among friends. A thoughtful gift, chosen carefully to please the recipient, is a sign that you are considerate, aware of the other’s wants and needs.”  
  
Ire sighed heavily, and leaned his forehead into his knees. “I haven’t been very good at that so far, have I?” He was talking to himself, which was fortunate, because Zainsubani was already dozing off again.  
  
Not long afterwards, Ire’s head was nodding too, and someone helped him stumble up the stairs and into a bed, where he slept, deep and dreamless as the bottom of an ocean trench.  
  
  
Morning saw him breakfasting, paying his bill, and leaving a sincere note of thanks for Zainsubani. He then reported to the Ald'ruhn guard tower, to confirm his statement from the previous night. Hanarai was in the cells, he was told, alternately screaming gibberish, and lapsing into eerie silences. They couldn’t say what was going to happen to her, but the Temple would decide. Ire found none of this reassuring, but there was little else to be done.  
  
At the bookseller’s, he located the recommendation he had received from a sleepy Zainsubani late the previous night: a volume of Ashlander poetry,  _Words of the Wind_. “It does not only contain Ahemmusa traditional songs, though there are many,” the trader had told him, exhibiting his own well-thumbed copy. “There are also epic verses like the Saga of Kit-kael Daedrabane, and Song of the Starblind Champion that every Velothi knows. And tales of famous lovers… well, Haelun and Amratur are translated here as spear-brothers, but this is the fault of Tribunal Temple publishing houses. Sadly, if my people refuse to write down our words, we must suffer the misinterpretations of those who do.”  
  
Iriel’s eyebrows had leapt. “Auri-El, that’s perfect. Gods, if he’d had this sort of thing growing up, he’d have saved himself a lot of angst. I think he’s been constructing his masculinity entirely from trashy heroic novels and people yelling  _vassith_ at him.”  
  
“Ai, this is what comes of children raised outside the tribe. When he was growing, I sent my son Hannat back to the Ahemmusa for three months of each year. Every summer, to help with the guar, and to teach him his culture. Stop him getting wrongheaded. Perhaps this will undo some damage.”  
  
“I hope so.”  
  
With the book tucked under his arm, and a considerably lighter step than he had arrived with, Iriel boarded the silt strider to Balmora.  



	107. appearance

The strider arrived at noon, right on schedule. Iriel disembarked, still in a buoyant mood, and surveyed Balmora from the top of the strider port. It wasn’t exactly his favourite place in Vvardenfell. There was the Council Club, home of racist locals who threw things at him. There was the Mages’ Guild, home of tiresome infighting and ego-driven power-plays. There was the Temple, home of small-minded, evangelical priests. There was Tsiya’s house, home of… well, Tsiya.

Still, he couldn’t help smiling. Transferring his gaze across the river, there was Caius Cosades’ house, where he would soon be paid for his efforts. And there was the South Wall Corner Club, home of his friend Sottilde, and current residence of someone Iriel had missed horribly, and was determined to be a better boyfriend to.  
  
_Even if he didn’t bother to come and meet me off the strider,_  he thought, descending the steps. _I know I was due back last night, but with only two striders a day, he still might have guessed I’d be on this one._  
  
As he stepped into the street and turned the corner, someone stumbled out of the shadows at the base of the strider port, and collided with him head-on. The man reeled unsteadily backwards, spluttering incoherent curses, the sweet stench of skooma on his breath. His eyes were so vacant, it took a moment before Ire even realised it was Cosades. Appalled, he watched the Imperial man, barefoot and unshaven, collapse to his hands and knees in front of him.  
  
Ire dropped down next to him. “Come on, you need to go home. Let me help you.”  
  
Cosades was groggy, but regained his feet, leaning heavily on Iriel’s shoulder. “Sorry…” he slurred. “Was just… trying to…” A fit of coughing and retching seized him.  
  
“Shhh, never mind.” Ire began supporting him towards the bridge. “This way, come on.”  
  
They progressed slowly up Labour Street towards Cosades’ house. Ire was guiltily hoping his boss would be compos mentis enough to pay him that day, as he had plans to treat Julan to dinner at the Eight Plates. As they approached his door, however, Cosades suddenly hissed in his ear, “Turn right round the side of the house.” Too surprised to object, Iriel did so, slipping into a narrow gap between the house and the city wall.  
  
As soon as they were out of sight of the street, the weight on Ire’s shoulder lifted, and the Spymaster turned to face him. “Follow me. Stay low.” He led Iriel along the backs of the houses, until they came to a ragged gap in the outer wall, which he quickly dragged Iriel through, and out into the bushy scrublands of West Gash.  
  
“You could have just  _talked_  to me, you know!” Iriel was not impressed. “Where are we going? What’s wrong with your house?”  
  
“Quiet.” Cosades pulled Ire behind a bush, and crouched there, watching the hole in the wall. “Did anyone else know you were going to be on that strider?”  
  
“No, but–”  
  
“Good. Then with any luck, our little performance will have thrown off everyone who  _isn’t_  interested in me, and attracted the attention of anyone who  _is_. Someone broke into my house last night, and made off with a number of documents. Nothing critical, that was all far better hidden, and everything’s encoded, but still. Careless of me. And worrying. They didn’t take the gold on the table, so this was no casual thief.”  
  
Iriel nodded slowly, chewing his lip. “It might not be related, but I was briefly captured by the Sixth House while I was in Ald'ruhn. They’re a cult, worshipping Dagoth Ur, and smuggling strange red statues.”  
  
Cosades raised an eyebrow, but kept watching the walls. “This ties in with my information. I’m hearing more and more reports of people going crazy in the streets, attacking outlanders. They’ve been finding these statues nearby and in their houses. A trusted informant says the Sixth House is a secret cult associated with a number of strange events recently, and, more importantly, my informant thinks these recent disturbances are related in some way to the Nerevarine Prophecies. Did you contact Hassour Zainsubani?”  
  
“I did. Do you want my report?”  
  
“Not yet. Wait.”  
  
Iriel waited, hunched in the undergrowth, wishing that, whatever Cosades’ strange private Spymaster problems were, he would get over them, so that Ire could get paid and get on with his life. “Your secret admirer could be invisible, you know,” he remarked.  
  
“That’s why we’re out here,” said Cosades. “Invisible feet would still disturb this long grass.”  
  
Eventually, he exhaled, and stood up, knees clicking. “All right. I think we’re in the clear, but we should keep moving. Let’s take a pleasant little stroll. Just a tired old sugartooth and his young companion, out taking the air together. Yes?” He smiled archly, and set off into the wilderness at a far more energetic pace than his cover identity warranted.  
  
Iriel began muttering darkly to himself about  _worst sugar-daddy ever_  and  _not your fucking pullimer_ , but scowled along behind him.  
  
  
“…So that’s all he could tell me, really. He said that even among Ashlanders, nobody takes the Nerevarine business seriously except the Urshilaku.”  
  
Cosades nodded, as if Ire had only confirmed what he already knew. “I see. In that case, our course is clear.”  
  
“Oh gods…”  
  
“I’m promoting you, and sending you to the Urshilaku camp to speak with the leaders of the cult. But before you go, I think it may be time to tell you what’s going on.” There was a steely tension in Cosades’ voice, like a coiled spring, a suspended blade. He led Iriel further along the banks of the river, to where the water rushed fast and shallow across half-submerged stones. Where the sound would prevent their conversation from carrying too far. He sat down on a large rock, and indicated for Iriel to join him.  
  
_I’m not going to like this, am I?_  thought Ire, which turned out to be quite the understatement.  
  
“The Emperor and his advisers think you have the appearanceof meeting the conditions of the Nerevarine prophecies. That’s why you were pulled out of prison on his Majesty’s authority and sent to me. So you could satisfy the conditions of the prophecies and become the Nerevarine. Those were the instructions in the coded package you gave me when you arrived.”  
  
Shock and disbelief dulled Ire’s voice into a barely audible monotone. “Appearance? Conditions? What conditions?”  
  
“The package you gave me described the prophecy’s conditions, and you seem to match them. ‘An orphan and outcast.’ 'A youth born on a certain day to uncertain parents.’ Standard vague prophecy stuff.”  
  
“But I’m not an orphan! An outcast, perhaps, but… my parents are alive. Aren’t they? Do… do you know something I don’t?”  
  
From the slight quirk in Cosades’ eyebrow, it seemed to be the other way around. “According to your file,” he said, “you declared on admission to the Imperial Prison that your parents were 'deceased and/or unknown’.”  
  
“No, they… oh gods.” Blinking and frowning with effort, Ire dredged a memory from his clouded recollections of that difficult time. “I was… trying to spare them the shame. Or myself, I don’t know. Either way, I couldn’t bear the thought of them knowing I’d been arrested. It didn’t even work, the University must have informed them eventually, but… yes. I told the prison that. But it’s not true, so I don’t fit the prophecy!”  
  
“No chance you’re adopted, is there?”  
  
“Not really. I have my father’s eyes, and my mother’s hair. And whenever I upset her, my ma used to tell me, in really unnecessary detail, about her thirty-two hour childbirth, and how I hadn’t been worth it at all.”  
  
“A pity,” Cosades said, dryly. “Nevertheless, orders are orders. It’s not for me to judge whether you fit the prophecy. Or you. The Urshilaku are the heads of the Nerevarine cult. So I’m sending you to speak with them. Tell them the parts of your story that fit, leaving the Emperor out of it, of course, and have them test you against their Nerevarine prophecies. It’s worth a shot. I can see how it would be nice to have a Nerevarine in our pocket. Just in case.”  
  
“A Nerevarine… in our pocket.” Ire repeated the words mechanically. “In the Emperor’s pocket. A puppet reborn Nerevar, controlled by the Empire.”  
  
“Perhaps. At first, I thought we were just supposed to create a persuasive impostor. But the Emperor and his advisers seem to think this prophecy is genuine - whatever a 'genuine’ prophecy is. I don’t know what to think about that. But I am sure of one thing. We’re going to take it seriously, just as his Majesty commands.”  
  
Iriel held up his index finger. Frowning, he jiggled it back and forth for a while, occasionally pressing it to his lips. Eventually, in a carefully experimental tone, he said: “No.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“Say I refuse. What happens then?”  
  
Cosades slipped an arm through his. From a distance, it might have looked affectionate, up close it felt like the manacle it was. The Spymaster’s cold blue eyes and bushy grey eyebrows were inches from his face. “Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to run away from me?” Ire managed to nod.  
  
“Do you think the same thing will happen again? No, don’t bother trying to reply: the answer’s no. It won’t. Because what happened last time was the softest of soft options. Back then, you hadn’t been sworn into the Emperor’s service, hadn’t agreed to become a Blade. Hadn’t become privy to any classified information, such as the identities and locations of other agents. It’s all very different now. You don’t get to just walk away, Iriel. That isn’t how this sort of business works, I’m afraid.”   
  
Iriel’s face betrayed the various horrible possibilities playing out behind his eyes. Cosades maintained his icy glare, but released Ire’s arm and lowered some of the steel in his voice. “You wouldn’t have been my first choice for this, either. My guess is they think your skill with magic might make up for what you lack in the legendary hero department. But if the Emperor hadn’t decided to take a chance on you, you’d still be serving a life sentence in jail. Remember that. All I’m asking you to do for now, is to talk to the Urshilaku and have them test you.”  
  
“That’s all? Test me? And what happens when I fail?”  
  
“Who says you’ll fail? Your orders, by the way, include endeavouring not to fail.”  
  
“What?!”  
  
Cosades gazed pensively at the running water, slowly drumming his fingers against his knee. “Seems to me, these prophecies are set up in deliberately shifty ways. For example, apparently your date of birth is only one of a number of possible interpretations of the vague astrological references found in the verses. We found a prisoner who matched one of them. Lucky you. But I’m not sure the details even matter. The Emperor and his counsellors say you have the  _appearance_ of satisfying the conditions of the prophecy. Do you  _really_ satisfy the prophecy? Are you  _really_ the prophesied Nerevarine? If you satisfy the conditions of the Nerevarine prophecies, will that  _make_ you the Nerevarine? It sounded stupid to me. It still sounds like hokey superstition. But.. is this how history works? Who knows. Who knows.”  
  
_Who knows?!_ Stunned beyond any possibility of further conversation, Iriel stood up. Cosades didn’t stop him, evidently happy to be left to his meta-historical meditations.  
  
  
Iriel picked a direction at random, and started walking, stamping through the West Gash underbrush, rats and scribs scurrying out of his frantic path.  
  
_It’s the fucking illusion magic again. They think I can pretend to be a hero! Master of deception! Why does everyone think I’m deceptive? All my life, the problem’s been the opposite: I don’t know how to be anything other then myself! That’s why I had to start using illusion, it was the best protection I could manage! Because being myself is never right, never acceptable. And now I’m supposed to be Nerevar? Fuck that. Fuck everything._  
  
He spent several hours walking in circles through the wilderness, swearing, arguing with himself and returning again and again to the same questions. Finally, he turned back towards Balmora, exhausted and ravenous, but no closer to possessing any answers.  
  
_How the fuck can I get out of this? How the fuck am I going to escape?_  
  
_…How the fuck am I going to tell Julan?_  
  
Regarding the last one, he needn’t, in fact, have worried.


	108. ground

Iriel almost didn’t recognise him, almost walked past. Even though it was Julan’s hair, Julan’s shirt, Julan’s eternally-grubby guarskin pants, something was off. It was in the way he stood. Near the wall but not leaning on it, arms too stiff, holding himself in tension against something unseen.

His face was wrong, too. His features were the same as ever: heavy, angular brows; deep-set, dark-red eyes; more nose than was strictly necessary. Lips often twisted into disapproving, suspicious lines, though Ire had learned it usually indicated uncertainty more than anything else, and a grin was rarely far beneath the surface. Now, the materials were the same, but the construction was different. Ire had never seen him look this way before.  
  
There was no uncertainty, no suspicion in his expression this time. What his eyes held now was confirmation. And a stare full of broken glass, aimed directly at Iriel, who trailed to a confused halt in the middle of the Balmora street.  
  
“You.”  
  
“…Me?” Iriel’s brain was having difficulty interpreting the situation. Even after all he’d been through, as pessimistic and cynical as he thought he’d become, however carefully he tried to anticipate the blow, when it came, it still always knocked him flat.  
  
“Did you think that I wouldn’t find out?” Julan’s voice grated like rusty machinery. “Did you think I was so  _stupid_ ,such a simple, unsophisticated  _savage_ , that I’d never figure out what you were up to?”  
  
Icy water began to trickle into Iriel’s veins, drop by drop, multiplying and spreading.  
  
Julan began moving towards him. There was something slightly off about that, too: shoulders high and rigid, as if he were being held up by wires.  
  
“I didn’t believe it at first.” He jerked to a halt a few feet away. “Even after finding all that coded paper in Cosades’ house, when it was clear he wasn’t just some old sugartooth. I still thought it couldn’t be as bad as it seemed. Gods… you’ll laugh, but I still thought I was trying to protect you. But then, you’ve been laughing at me all along, haven’t you?”  
  
He veered sideways, and began pacing, boots scuffing irregular beats on the compressed earth of the street. “I thought I could save you. I tried to work out when he’d got to you, what he might be threatening you with. I almost asked Sottilde to decode the paper, but then it hit me: Cosades already bought out the Guild. She was in on it too, Helende, everyone…”  
  
He stopped pacing. “But I still thought… that  _you_ hadn’t betrayed me. It wasn’t until I listened in to your meeting today - oh yes! You can tell that n'wah from me I saw through his stupid little spy games. D'you know, it was fun, actually fun, for a while, sneaking up on you!  _Almost_  a challenge! I hadn’t done any real hunting in so long!”  
  
He gave a gasping laugh, then scowled as he regained his place in his rant. “So, you see… it was then I realised the whole truth. That you  _hadn’t_  betrayed me. You couldn’t.” With each line, his voice got louder, harsher, the machinery gaining momentum. “Because you were never on my side in the first place! You were with them from the beginning! The fucking Empire! The whole fucking time! That’s why they sent you here, to stop me!” He looked at Ire with unfamiliar eyes. “And I almost fell for it.”  
  
The icy water had filled Iriel’s chest. He managed one final gulp of air, before it reached his throat, and froze solid.  
  
 _Iriel, you’re a fisherman’s son. How could you forget that once someone’s hooked you, what comes next is always the blow to the head, and the knife in the guts?  
  
_ Julan’s face contorted into  something that could have been a smile, if not for the complete absence of positive emotion. “You really had me for a while, you know? You were so convincing, so genuinely pathetic. I thought you needed someone to take care of you.” He shook his head, marvelling at his own credulity.  
  
“I knew you were hiding something, but you let me think it was something else, something smaller, pettier, more suited to you. I never dreamed you were capable of this level of deception. What’s… what’s really  _funny_ , is that I distrusted you, in the beginning, when we met. Back then, I wondered why you were helping me. My instincts were right, but I talked myself out of it. Told myself I was being paranoid, as usual. I was weak, alone, and you took advantage of that, didn’t you? Soon, I was eating out of your fucking hand. When I think of all the guarshit I put up with from you, telling myself… thinking you…” A hand flicked up, knocking himself on the side of the head. “I don’t know. I don’t  _know_ what I was thinking. What did I ever get from you, in return? I’m further from my goal than ever, but that was the whole plan, wasn’t it?”  
  
He resembled an animal who, after spending all night caught in a trap, has finally managed to gnaw through its own leg. Free, lighter, somehow, but relearning how to move. Incapable of processing further pain signals, nerves damped numb in self-protection. Oblivious to the bleeding now, and forgetting that its mouth had ever tasted of anything but blood. Wanting more.  
  
“You… Filling my head with your endless words. Questioning everything, mushing everything into grey confusion until every reason to act is lost, and the only thing left to do is nothing. Trying to make me doubt myself, trying to make me fail. Tricking me into abandoning everything, my destiny, my mission, my people, my faith! I thought you were a coward, but you knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you? You’re like Shani, so sure you know what I really want, what you can tempt me with, to make me break my resolve! Making me believe I’m too weak to succeed! You have  _no idea_ what I’m capable of! None of you do!”  
  
He had the unseeing, unhearing air of mania that he’d had on Red Mountain, screaming at the empty wind, arguing with people who weren’t there.  
  
“And that’s not even the worst of it! It’s not enough that you stop me, they sent you to replace me! To pass yourself off as the Nerevarine! You, an outlander, an Altmer, for Azura’s sake!! To trick my people into following you into the arms of the Empire!” Outrage choked his voice, and he panted for breath, air whistling harshly through gritted teeth.  
  
 _ _It’ll be all or nothing, with him, I told myself. I was wrong. There are things worse than nothing.__

Julan took another step closer, and Ire flinched away. “What, you think I’m going to hit you?” Ire could tell Julan was picturing it as clearly as he was, though the exact emotions the thought inspired in him were hard to read. Whatever they were, after a moment, he turned away, growling, and began pacing again, fists clenched. _…you would lose honour if you touched me…_ _  
_  
“Tell me I’m wrong.” His voice was all biting sarcasm, but for a moment, his face was recognisable. “Go ahead, say it’s all a mistake, you were framed. A victim. Someone else did it, and left the knife at your door. You always had so many pitiful stories, didn’t you, of how you’d been unfairly treated? Funny how the common factor there is _you._ ” Hints of pain breaking through the façade, cracks. “Tell me you didn’t really do this to me.”  
  
But Ire was beyond speech, now. This time, he needed no one pinning his wrists. He was overwhelmed by phantom sensations: rough hands gripping his arms, dragging him weightlessly, throwing him down, flagstones before his eyes, blood pooling in his mouth as his teeth went through his lip. An armoured knee in the small of his back, shouts, words: distant and meaningless. The steel bracer locking around his arm, draining part of his mind away, taking parts of himself he went without for hundreds of buried days, some parts he was still missing. The endless accusations, nonsensical in detail, but their inherent truth sliding like skewers into his bones. _You’re guilty; you’ve always been guilty, and you always will be. It’s only ever a matter of time before people find you out._  
  
He met Julan’s gaze, wordlessly:  _I can’t._ Julan lowered his brows and whirled away, resuming his endless pacing, launching into a new monologue that Ire could no longer maintain a grip on, but involved point by point paranoid breakdowns of each Thieves’ Guild member, and their probable Imperial sympathies and connections.  
  
As the ground collapsed from under him, Iriel grasped for one last handhold _._ He knew it was a long shot, might buy him seconds at most, but he’d try anything, anything that might get through the blinkers of Julan’s anger. He raised a hand, pulling syllables into his mind. Julan wasn’t looking at him, was ranting and gesticulating in the direction of the South Wall. Then a soft green glow enveloped him, and he stopped. Blinked. For a moment he was there, but only for a moment. The next, he rounded on Iriel, face contorted with rage.  
  
“What the fuck did you just…  _CHARM?!_  You’re trying to MIND CONTROL me now?” Ire’s hand hadn’t moved, traces of incriminating energy lingering on his fingers. Julan seized it by the wrist, yanking him forwards. “Or were you doing this all along, and this is just the first time I noticed? Sheogorath, is there nothing you won’t stoop to?”  
  
Their faces were inches apart. Ire felt nothing, was nothing, could nothing, but his body, slowly catching up and trying to contribute, sent tears welling into his eyes. They brimmed, and rolled silently down his cheeks.  
  
“No,” Julan said coldly. “That won’t work either. Don’t you get it? None of your manipulative emotional guarshit means anything to me any more.”  
  
“…go…” Ire had tried for ‘let me go,’ but most of the words had got lost along the way, caught in his dry throat or fumbled by his leaden tongue.  
  
Julan shook his head. “Oh no. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. D'you think I’m going to sit back and let you mislead my people? We’ll see about that! You may have betrayed me, but I won’t let you betray the whole of Morrowind to the Emperor.”  
  
He let go of Iriel’s arm, and watched with satisfaction as he crumpled to the ground. Then he reached for his Recall amulet. “I’m going back to Sadrith Mora. I’m getting my stuff, and if any of you blighted fetchers know what’s good for you, you won’t try and stop me.” He jabbed a finger at Iriel. “But this isn’t over.” _  
_  
 _…but it is…_  



	109. therapeutic

“Iriel, he is  _stalking_ you, and it is  _not_ OK!” Sottilde folded her arms and glared at him across the table.  
  
Ire gazed vacantly back at her, although his eyes were barely visible through the lank curtain of his hair. The rest of his face was shielded behind his arms as he slumped forwards, chin resting on Muriel’s burnished oakwood. “I didn’t say it was OK,” he said, eventually. “I only said there were reasons.”  
  
“Well, I’m not seeing ‘em! How long has this been going on for?”

“I don’t know. More than a week.” His voice was flat and neutral, as if it had no interest in the proceedings whatsoever. “He isn’t always there, but he always comes back. Helende got Fandus and Celegorn to drive him off for a while. They threw him in the sea, I’m told. Then I went into town for components the other day, and he was there by the bridge. Watching. Hel said I had to have someone go with me, after that.”  
  
“Shor’s balls, Ire.” Her face softened. “I had no idea. You both skipped out of Balmora without saying good bye, but I figured you had things to do, y'know, prob'ly each other. Why didn’t you send me a message? Habasi’s had me tied up with this goddamn code, but I still woulda come, if I’d known.”  
  
“I wasn’t in any state to see anyone.”  
  
“That’s why I woulda been there, ya scuttlehead! Kyne, you shoulda seen me after me and Rals broke up. After a while, I tied handkerchiefs under my eyes and nose, to save time, and keep my hands free. Then Bacola said I was disturbing the customers, and gave me the night off. But I don’t get it. If he dumped you, why the bloody battleaxe of Borgir is he the one following you around? What does he want?”  
  
“I…”  
  
“It’s goddamn psychedelical torture, is what it is! That rat bastard! I can’t believe it. Ya think you  _know_ a guy, you know?”  
  
“…he thought he did…”  
  
“I can’t  _believe_ I ever… where is he? Where is that scrib-sucking fetcher? Is he out there right now, watching the windows?”  
  
“Tilde, please…” He reached for her arm too late, she was already running to the front door of the cornerclub and wrenching it open.  
  
“JULAAAAAAAN!!!” she bawled into the darkness. “SHOW YERSELF, YA BLIGHTED KWAMA-GRUB!!!”  
  
Iriel hovered behind the threshold, wringing his hands. “Please stop. He’s probably over behind that wall, but you won’t… he never says anything, he just stares at me. Come back inside,  _please_.”  
  
Tilde made a variety of eloquent gestures involving her fist. “GET OUTTA HERE, YA CREEPY SNEAKING SNEAK-CREEP!!!”  
  
“…please, Tilde…”  
  
“BOTH OF US COMPLETELY REGRET EVER FUCKING YOU!!!”  
  
“…there’s really no need to go that far…”  
  
Ire finally managed to persuade her back inside, and closed the door, sagging against it. “What are you going to do?” Sottilde demanded. “You can’t live like this, can you? How long can he keep this up? What’s he eating, where’s he sleeping?”  
  
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”  
  
She narrowed her eyes at the second part. “Liar. What’s really going on here, Ire? You can make yourself invisible, inhearable and in-everything-else-able! Shit, you can do those temple-teleporty things! What’s stopping you from sneaking out of town and hiding out somewhere else til he gives up? I mean, he’d probably check Balmora, but there must be other places you could go. You could get rid of him, if you wanted to.  _Don’t_  you want to? Are you secretly enjoying the attention, or something?”  
  
He turned a sunken, bloodshot stare on her. “Tilde, I swear to you by every Aedra and Daedra right on down to the tiniest scrib, I am not enjoying  _anything_.”  
  
She tugged disconsolately at her dress. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I just don’t get it. You guys were so cute together. What the shit went wrong, that things ended up like this?”  
  
“Please, don’t ask me to explain, because I  _can’t_.”  
  
“I did what you asked, you know,” she said, suddenly. “I made up a new last verse for that horrible song of yours, about the girl with the tooth-stealing perv of a boyfriend. Except I can’t make it fit the music right, so you have to help me. Did you know nothing rhymes with scumbucket?”  
  
“…Come suck it?”  
  
“There, that’s why I need your help! But, see… in my ending, it turns out he was playing a joke on her, with fake blood and flour on his face to make it all corpsy. He’s not dead at all, he just wanted to know if she still loved him. And then they live happily ever after. It was all a mistake.”  
  
“Tilde… even if it  _was_ a mistake to begin with, once someone’s caused you enough pain over something, it stops mattering how it started.”   
  
She frowned angrily, sniffed, then threw her arms around him. He rubbed her back mechanically, until she started laughing, and pulled away. “I’m s'posed to be the one comforting you! This is no good! Come sit in a chair, so I can hug you properly.”  
  
“Why do I need to be sitting down?”  
“Because your head should be level with my boobs, it’s very important.”  
“Is it really?”  
“Yes, they’re wossname. Terrapintic? Theramintic?”  
“Therapeutic?”  
“Thassit!”  
  
“Tilde, are you trying to take advantage of my weakened state to sexually harass me? Never mind, I don’t care any more. Come on, I’ll even make it easier for you, and get myself drunk.”  
  
They reeled into the kitchen, arm in arm, and Ire began rifling through the upper cupboards for bottles. “Do you know, the one thing I miss about the Summerset Isles is that six foot four is below average height? I haven’t dated anyone taller than me since ‘Nel. Unless I stick to ex-pat Altmer or Nords, I’ll tragically have to come to terms with never again being heart-high to a man.”  
  
“What’s so special about being heart-high? Ribs get in the way of the blade. You get better angles on the throat, when you’re taller.”  
  
“…Never mind.”  
  
“And don’t ever date Nords. Bunch of wankshites, the lot of 'em. Trust your wise auntie Tilde on this one.”  
  
“Wise auntie Tilde, for someone who likes to take the piss out of Nord stereotypes, you do rather tar all Nord men with the same brush. Surely you can’t have missed the fact that elves are also a bunch of wankshites?”  
  
“Yeah, but they’re  _pretty_ wankshites with cute ears.”  
  
“I want that on my fucking gravestone, please. Or maybe a badge…”  
  
  
  
“Oh my gods… Tilde, I’m sorry I doubted the comforting properties of your boobs. I’m going to stay here forever, is that all right?”  
  
“See! I told you. You should have called me  _way_ earlier.”  
  
“Will you pull me out if I look like I’m about to go unconscious, or worse, straight?”  
  
“Promise. I’ll find a cute guy to come give you mouth to mouth.”  
  
“I 'ove 'ou, 'ilde.”


	110. green

Iriel woke at first light, pale sun pouring through his attic window. For a moment, the light was all that entered his mind. Then, as always, he remembered. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillow, waiting for the worst of it to pass. It took a sliver less time than it had the day before. He took a deep breath, held for a count of five, released for seven. Again. Right. He sat up and rose from the bed in one fluid movement.

His attic room was still sparse and utilitarian, his alchemy set and books stacked neatly against the wall. Seeing it, you would assume that he had been there a day or two at most, and might leave at any moment. The one concession to personalisation was a piece of brightly illustrated parchment tacked onto one of the beams, a recent gift from Sottilde. “The trader said it’s s'posed to be some sort of Redguard sword form thingy,” she’d told him, “but they look more like they’re dancing without any pants on to me. Anyway, it was the gayest thing I’d ever seen, so I thought of you.” He’d been deeply touched.  
  
He still felt weird about having it visible on the wall, but it was an exercise in comfort zone extension. Iriel had grown up having no privacy whatsoever, his mother routinely going through his possessions and making scenes about things she found. As a result, he had never developed the impulse to assemble and display physical items to express aspects of himself, since that was the last thing he wanted to do. But one of his current projects was trying to determine which of his coping mechanisms were still useful, and which were defences that, while useful to him once, were now only mental clutter, getting in his way.  
  
He poured water from a jug into a shallow bowl containing a washcloth. Automatically, he began heating it with a spell, then changed his mind. He’d bathed and washed his hair the night before, soaking in the water until the shouts from the queue outside became too intrusive to bear, even through the Silence spell. This morning’s cleansing was primarily ritualistic, therefore the colder the better. He wrung out the cloth and pressed it to his face.  
  
All his clothes were clean and ready, the spares packed into his bag, and the ones for today folded on a chair. He pulled off his nightshirt and dressed: warm, hard-wearing things for the northern shores of Vvardenfell and the Ashlands. A rust-coloured flannel shirt, brown pants in a solid weave, belted. Leather boots, hopefully waterproof. His blue silk scarf, (dispatched with a curt note on Imperial Cult headed paper) hopefully ashproof. Fandus the scout, schadenfreude rendering him obnoxiously helpful, had lent him a strange facial contraption involving goggles, a mouth-filter and an alarmingly fetishistic number of buckles. It was in his bag, but it scared him, and he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.  
  
Finally, over the rest, a heavy, poncho-like cape the colour of dried comberries, and probably actually dyed with them, by his guess. It buttoned with three large, irregular pieces of iridescent bugshell along one shoulder, and was slashed elsewhere to leave the arms free to move. He’d considered burning it, but it was well-suited to his purposes, and he hoped that appropriating it gave off a certain fuck-you air. Once he’d soaked it with roobrush and heather, it almost didn’t smell of its original owner any more.  
  
He rechecked his bag, counted the potion bottles. He wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to Urshilaku camp, but he hoped he’d made enough. It had been hard enough to make these, what with the damage his equipment had sustained, against the wall. Should he have made some Light potions? No, surely Night Eye would suffice. He didn’t anticipate needing to illuminate an area for anyone besides himself, after all.  
  
Would three water breathing potions be enough? He had a spell, but it was the sort of thing potions were better for: less chance of panic interfering. Perhaps he should make more. Out of hackle-lo. Shit. All right, never mind, keep going, don’t dwell. Before leaving his room, he rolled a few pinches of dried kreshweed up in some saltrice paper, and tucked it behind his ear.  
  
  
Celegorn was in the kitchen, buzzing around a foul-smelling saucepan, black eyes glittering. Iriel almost retreated, but forced himself onwards. He was sick of letting other people restrict his movements, and he wanted his morning tea. He would simply have to pay for it by interacting with Cel.  
  
The monochromatic nature of Cel’s eyes meant that you could never tell where he was looking, until he focused on you. Then you knew, because first his head would swivel through an unnatural number of degrees towards you, then his whole body would follow, as if rotated by invisible wires. Iriel found it exquisitely unnerving. It really didn’t help that Cel shaved his entire body, including his eyebrows, and filed his teeth to needle-sharp points. He advanced on Iriel. “You drank my milk!”  
  
“No,” said Ire, as firmly as he could. “I can’t bear to share a room with that stuff, let alone drink it.” Cel’s milk was imported from Valenwood: yellow, viscous and, from the smell, constantly fermenting. Ire had never asked how it was obtained, for fear of finding out.  
  
“Then you moved it off my shelf, and someone else drank it!” Cel’s voice was clipped, staccato, and free from overt hostility, but always slightly louder and closer than Iriel preferred.  
  
“No,” he repeated. “Your fucking moon cakes were on my shelf, though. Helende finds out about that, she’ll skin you.”  
  
Cel’s eyes narrowed. “Are you making  _skin_  jokes at me?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Did you eat any?”  
  
“FUCKING NO!” Iriel bristled. “I am three months clean and holding, thank you very much.” He had certainly been tempted by the crumbs of sugar spilling over the tray, but determination not to cede the moral high ground to Celegorn had kept him on the straight and narrow.  
  
Cel flicked his tongue over his teeth. “Then it must have been your horrible friend, with the grabby hands and the filthy words.”  
  
Iriel rolled his eyes. “Her name is Sottilde, as you know perfectly well, and she hasn’t been here for over a week. And she’s not interested in your vile milk, Cel. Nobody is. Someone probably thought it was rotten, and threw it out.”  
  
“They’d better not have!” Cel brought his pointed nose to within an inch of Iriel’s, and bared his teeth. “I keep Green, unlike you people. I need my milk  _for minerals_.”  
  
Iriel turned away, more bored than intimidated. He made a mug of bittergreen tea, and took it into the back garden. Muriel was there, her small, plump body attacking the soil with a rake. She had a large sack next to her, and every few seconds, she plunged her hand into it, and tossed a handful of greyish dust into the furrows.  
  
“You’re out early,” he said, leaning against the wall and ferreting behind his ear for the roll-up. “Do you even sleep?”  
  
She gave him a broad smile. “The ash I had sent over from Molag Mar arrived! I couldn’t wait to start digging it into me beds. First Planting’ll be upon us before we know it, and I want to get it into the soil, doing its work well before then.”  
  
Creating a small flame, he dragged on the kreshweed until it lit. “And here I thought ‘carrying ash to Vvardenfell’ was just a figure of speech for something utterly pointless.” He sent a curl of smoke into the ice-blue morning sky.  
  
“Ahh, but there’s ash and  _ash_ , see? Ash from the south is much cleaner than the northern ash, no blight to it at all. And where I order it from, there are all sorts o’ wildflower seeds mixed into it, so it’s like a bag o’ hidden treasure!”  
  
“But why get ash at all?”  
  
“For the soil! Ash is full o’ goodness, all kinds o’ nutrients and minerals to make the soil fertile. Why’d you think everything on this island grows so big? Sure, we haven’t had a big eruption in thousands o’ years, thank the Nine, but the volcano still puffs it out, and the ashstorms spread it around. People complain, to be sure, but the plants love it!”  
  
“Minerals? I’ll be sure to tell Celegorn.” Ire yawned, and sipped his tea, enjoying the contrast of the searing liquid with the cold air. “My mother once told me gardening is something that takes hold of you as you get older. I always hoped she was wrong. I really don’t need more things to feel guilty about neglecting.”   
  
He watched her progress along the empty flower bed, sprinkling and raking. “Do you need any help?”  
  
“No, love, you drink your tea. I’m into the rhythm of it now.”  
  
Ire shrugged, and did as he was told.  
  
“Do you know,” he said, presently, “when I was at the Arcane University, I had a Restoration professor who tried to calm me when I was having a meltdown by telling me to close my eyes and pretend I was a tree? To imagine my roots spreading deep and secure into the soil, my leaves unfurling in the sunlight, my sap flowing slow and steady. I laughed in her face so hard they had to lie me on the floor with my legs raised. I mean, can you imagine me as a tree? I’d still manage to be neurotic, somehow. Leaves falling off everywhere, petrified of squirrels. Anyway, thinking like a plant is a contradiction in terms. Plants aren’t sentient. That’s part of why I like them.”  
  
“Thought you didn’t like gardening.”  
  
“I don’t, but I do like plants. They’re inspiring, because no matter what, they always try to grow. They literally can’t not. Even when it’s hopeless and doomed, seeds trying to root in sheer cliff faces. They don’t know it’s pointless to struggle. They don’t have the senses to realise, or the brains to tell them to give up. They can’t get bored, or depressed, or worry about anything. As long as they have sunlight and water, they’ll keep multiplying their cells or whatever they do, and growth just… happens. I admire that.”  
  
“You can help me with the weeding, then, come the time.”  
  
“Nooo, that’s the bit I can’t stand. The arbitrary power over life and death:  _you_  are a good plant and may remain,  _you_  are a weed, to be cast into the fire.”  
  
She chuckled. “The seed planting, then.”  
  
“I don’t know if I’ll still be here to see them come up.”[](http://chameleonspell.tumblr.com/post/139933381188/111-fine)  
  
“Why wouldn’t you be?” She looked up at him warily, and he waved his cigarette in what he intended to be a reassuring manner.  
  
“No reason! I’m not planning to off myself or anything! I just… can’t stay here forever. I need to work out where I ought to be.”  
  
“That’s good. Does it matter, whether you’re here to watch the seeds come up?”  
  
“I… suppose not. All right.” He tapped kreshweed ash into a furrow. “There, I’m helping already.”  
  
Helende stuck her head out of the back door. “There you are! I thought you wanted to catch the early boat! Are you ready?”  
  
A cold flash of automatic panic made a grab for him, but he evaded it. “Yes,” he said.[](http://chameleonspell.tumblr.com/post/139933381188/111-fine)  



	111. fine

“I really think someone ought to go with you,” Helende had said, the previous day. “I know  _he_  hasn’t been seen lately, but it still doesn’t feel right, you going so far alone. Are you sure you won’t let me send Cel? I promise he’s a sweetheart, once you get to know him.”

Iriel had scoured his brain for a diplomatic way to say he’d  _rather suck off a flame atronach_ _than go anywhere with that fucking Bosmer_. He hadn’t found one, so he’d lied instead: “I can’t deal with Celegorn’s sugar use. My recovery is fragile enough right now, all things considered, and I’d rather not risk exposing myself to his–”  
  
“All right, fair enough.” Helende had sighed. “But you know Habasi can’t spare Tilde until this Camonna Tong code is cracked, and Bodu’s still missing. Everyone else, I need here.”  
  
“I’ll be fine,” he’d insisted, imagining the horrors that might result from introducing Celegorn into an Ashlander camp. More than just the guar would be spooked, he knew that. He honestly didn’t have  _that_  much of a problem with Cel’s sugar. He had a problem with Cel’s obliviousness to personal space, the volume and stridency of his voice, and his conviction that everyone needed to know exactly what he thought of them at all times. It was like sharing a room with a small, toothy supernova, and Iriel wilted beneath the blast of his extroversion. He was barely able to share a breakfast table, never mind days of ships and hiking through the Ashlands to Urshilaku Camp.  
  
In the end, Helende herself had elected to come with him for the first part of the journey, a ship from Sadrith Mora to Tel Mora. Walking through town towards the docks, he was struck by the difference in reaction she provoked from those around her. Non-Merish races didn’t give her a second glance, but several elves did double-takes. A few continued to stare at her, some when they thought she couldn’t see them, others openly.  
  
“Have you ever…” Iriel couldn’t think of a polite way to ask, but ploughed on anyway, “…have you ever thought about using illusion magic? I’ve heard there are certain spells that can… make subtle alterations to the way you’re perceived by others.”  
  
She gave a short laugh. “I’ve worked with Erer Darothril for long enough, do you seriously think I’m unaware of the possibilities? Yes, there are spells. No, I don’t want to use them.”  
  
This time, he didn’t ask, but she could evidently feel him not asking, because a little further on, she said: “What do you think people would say, if I used illusion magic? They already think I’m deceptive. It might make things safer and easier for me in some ways, but in others, it wouldn’t. And I’d rather keep things simple. Magic’s never been my choice of method. It’d be a lot of effort, and quite frankly, I don’t see why I should have to.”  
  
“You don’t. I’m sorry I–”  
  
She brushed aside his apology. “No, no. Ask away, I don’t care. To answer your question, yes, I’ve considered it. Sometimes I still do, although more for myself, than for anyone else. But these days, I’m at a point where… I won’t say I’m at  _peace_ with my body, but we’ve reached a sort of… armed truce. I’d rather not disturb the balance of power.”  
  
She smirked. “And no. I don’t want to be completely invisible, either. You do whatever you need to do, but if people find my appearance objectionable, they can deal with it, not me. If necessary, I can protect myself quite adequately.”  
  
Ire lapsed into silence, recalling the times he’d made this journey with Julan. Remembering the way he had laughed off the dirty looks, proclaiming that anyone who didn’t like Ashlanders could bring it. The memory prickled in his stomach like he’d swallowed a burr.  
  
  
The ship was waiting, and they were soon underway. Ire sat on a crate, fidgeting his fingers and scuffing his boots against the deck. “See? It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s only a boat. You didn’t have to come.”  
  
“Oh, probably.” Helende grinned at him, then leaned over the gunwale, watching the waves. “I rather wanted an excuse to visit Tel Mora, actually,” she said. “I’m seeing someone new, and she works at the Tower. Probably shouldn’t be telling you that. Probably should be maintaining my superior officer mystique or somesuch. Oh well, too late now.”  
  
He went and stood beside her, cultivating a smirk. “Evidently, you want to tell me. Or you want to tell someone, and I’m the only one here. Or I have such appalling romantic luck, that I’m a safe person to tell these things to, because you’ll always feel blessed in comparison. So… is it going well?”  
  
“Bit early to be sure. She’s very sweet, very enthusiastic. I wasn’t sure what to expect from someone who works for Dratha. I was there looking for Bodu, cornered her purely to try and find out if she knew anything. I was most surprised when she asked me to go for a drink.”  
  
“So does she… know?”  
  
“Know what? My secret shame? About my ceramic kagouti collection, you mean? Yes, she knows. Not quite sure what to make of her reaction, though. Bit weird. Giggled, and said something about me being holy, like Mephala. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of time for Mephala, as these things go, but… it’s not what I’d prefer someone’s first thought to be.”   
  
Ire grimaced. “That does sound a rather… uncomfortable role to be put into. Especially if you’d only gone for a drink. Fulfilling people’s kinky Daedric fantasies is at least third date material, if you ask me.”   
  
“Quite. Anyway, she saw the look on my face, blushed adorably, and apologised. We’ll see.”  
  
“If it doesn’t work out, I highly recommend you call Sottilde. Tell her to wear something soft.”

“Did Tilde tell you the latest news out of Balmora?”  
  
“No, I was too busy sobbing into her bosom. Why?”  
  
“Just wondering if you’d heard about what Tsiya did.”  
  
“Oh gods. No. Do I even want to know?”  
  
“You might, actually. She turned herself in to the Imperial guards. Said she wanted to do her time, get clean, start over.”  
  
“Auri-El. What brought that on?”  
  
“Habasi, I assume. She’s been spending a lot of time at the fort, I’m told.” She tapped her fingers on the gunwale. “I hope she knows what she’s doing, but you can’t be too cynical about people. Can you? We’ve all needed a second chance, at one time or another. And it’s none of my business any more.”  
  
He studied the tense angles of her brow as she stared straight through the fungal towers in the distance. “Were you and Habasi…?”  
  
After a moment’s silence, and an almost imperceptible shrug, she said: “Once upon a time, yes. There were things that we needed from each other, back then. Later, we didn’t need those same things, and we parted ways, but we’re still friends. Sometimes, when the need is gone, it turns out that’s all it was. Nothing solid underneath, to build on.”  
  
Her eyes swerved sideways towards him. “If that’s how it was, it’s not your fault.”  
  
He dodged them. “That’s not how it was. I told you. It was his decision.”  
  
“Well, I know you don’t want to talk about it, so I wont pry, but… I do feel I should apologise. I can’t help thinking what happened with Julan was partially my fault. I encouraged you to depend on him, when it was clearly a bad idea. You were at a very vulnerable stage, and I had no idea he would be quite so… obsessive. I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget that people see me as an all-purpose authority figure. I think perhaps once you’ve survived long enough, people start assuming you know the secret to it, that it hasn’t mostly been chance, stumbling through the right people’s doors. I know a lot about locks and planning heists. Beyond that, it occasionally terrifies me that anyone thinks I have the faintest idea what I’m doing.”  
  
She clicked her tongue, and straightened up. “Anyway. Take my advice for what it is: friendly advice, not divine commandment, Mephalan or otherwise, but… if someone comes into your life when you’re fragile and need taking care of, but loses interest once you’re stable and independent, that’s a huge warning sign, and you’re better off without that sort of so-called support.”  
  
“That’s… not how it was.” He shook his head firmly, but spent the rest of the voyage chewing the inside of his cheek, staring at the horizon.  
  
  
When they reached Tel Mora, she gave him a searching look. “I do wish I could go with you, but things are such a nightmare with the Guild right now. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”  
  
He’d been preparing himself for this moment: the straight back, the easy, confident smile, the steady tone. “I am. I’m a master of illusion, right?”  
  
She smiled back, looking relieved. “I’ll tell Erer you said that.”  
  
“Please don’t.”   
  
She hugged him tightly. “Shadow hide you, Iriel.”  
  
“You, too. Um… I mean… good luck.”

He watched her walk away, into the twisting network of roots. Then, he found a quiet corner where he could see the gangplank of the boat he’d just disembarked from, and settled down to wait. He knew it wouldn’t be long.  
  



	112. rid

He slunk off the boat last, as Iriel had expected. He was invisible, but Ire recognised the hallmarks of his presence: the subtle ways that magic changed the quality of the air, the texture of the light. He made no sound, but Ire knew his silences too well to mistake them now.

He had let Helende and the others believe his stalker wasn’t around any more so they would stop worrying, stop treating him like he was breakable. He’d known all along that his malevolent shadow had simply become better at illusion, able to sustain full concealment for longer. The thing was, Ire had decided, none of it mattered any more.  
  
“You can drop the spell,” he called out across the docks. “I taught it to you myself, do you really think I can’t see through it?”  
  
The silent emptiness stilled, intensified.  
  
“I don’t care if you follow me.” Ire stood up, folded his arms. “In fact, I want you to. If this is what it takes to get rid of you, so be it. I want this over with. So save your magicka, because I’m not trying to escape. I’m not your fucking prey, and I’m sick of hiding from you.”  
  
For all his bravado, Ire flinched when he saw him. He had been steeling himself to see Julan up close for the first time in several weeks, but hadn’t expected him to look all that different. Reality was a shock.  
  
Julan’s hair was filthy, matted with things Ire couldn’t bring himself to scrutinise, but mud was one, and vomit probably another. Dozens of shallow scrapes and scratches ran down one side of his face, as if he’d been dragged along the ground. His lip was split, swollen and not healing cleanly, but what chance did it have, when nothing about him was clean? His armour was more mould than bone now, parts of it hanging loose and broken. Only the hilt of his glass longsword still provided a spark of colour, tied at his side, the blade wrapped in bloodstained sacking and string. If he’d managed to retain it in the face of would-be muggers, it had been at the cost of everything else, because his bag was nowhere to be seen.  
  
The combined impression was that he had been beaten up, set on fire, drowned, then buried in a garbage heap. And then the garbage heap had been set on fire. He was also, by his laboured, irregular gait, drunk. He frowned unsteadily at Iriel, without much overt aggression, but without much of anything else either, his eyes unfocused and vacant.  
  
Ire didn’t bother concealing his disgust, but tried to keep his voice level. “I’m going to Urshilaku camp,” he said. “To get this test over with, so the Empire will leave me alone. More importantly, so  _you’ll_  leave me alone. So you’ll stop causing work and worry for my friends.”

He tossed his head, flicking strands of hair from his face. “People have been so fucking kind, you know? People I didn’t even expect it from. For a long time, I didn’t think I deserved it. I’d got myself stuck, trying to work out what I did wrong, how I could have avoided everything blowing up in my face like that. I couldn’t do it, but I still knew it was all my fault, because it’s always my fault, isn’t it? And through it all, people kept being so kind, asking me what happened. Of course, I couldn’t tell them! My fucking break-up is classified information! But what I kept hearing, again and again, was: well, I don’t care what you did, you don’t deserve this. After a while, even I began to wonder if they were right.  
  
"At this point, I don’t give a shit who’s right. I want my life back. I want to help the people who care about me. I’ve been doing what I can to raise funds for the Guild. Alchemy, mostly, despite your best efforts. I paid off your fucking debt, by the way.” Helende had given him some of it, but Ire thought it best to leave her out of it. “I didn’t do it as a favour to you. I did it so there would be no remaining ties or complications. No reason for you to have anything to do with me or the Guild ever again.”  
 _  
_Ire shouldered his pack, and turned towards the other ships in the dock. “There ought to be a boat heading for Khuul that can drop us in roughly the right spot along the coast. Come on, if you’re coming. Wouldn’t want to loseme, now, would you?”  
 _  
  
_Striking it lucky with the departures, an hour later, Iriel was on board the _Falvillo’s Endeavour_ , heading north. Julan was slumped in a pile of rope near the mast, sleeping off whatever the hell he’d put into himself. Ire had paid for his passage, but was keeping as far away from the rasping snores and foully acrid smell as possible. Up in the bows, he could watch the rocky outcrops of the Sheogorad archipelago multiply from a sprinkling on the horizon into dense clusters of crusted, fungal stone.  
  
Another hour on, he felt the weather changing. A gale began whipping in from the west, bringing damp gusts of rain. The captain tried three times to bring the ship about, but handling the sails proved difficult. Ire would have preferred to remain on deck, and even offered to hold a rope, but the captain shook his head as he ushered him below. “We’ll have to keep north, hope the ruins of Ald Daedroth can shield us a bit, let us get to Dagon Fel for the night. There’s no beating that wind today, sera.”

After another hour of turbulent waters, the ship docked at dusk in a small fishing village on the northernmost side of Sheogorad Island.  
  
The captain hadn’t bothered trying to move Julan from his rope-nest. Iriel hadn’t been about to get involved either, so Julan had slept through the entire voyage, weather and all. Ire emerged from the hold just as a dark head, dripping wet, lurched upwards and looked around, blearily. Seeing Iriel, he blinked a few times, eyes wide. His brow creased. Finally, he scowled, dragged himself upright, and, as Ire strode off down the gangplank, stumbled groggily after him.


	113. defiance

“Smile, lad! It’s not the end of the world!”  
  
Iriel, hauling himself and his pack across the boards of the small jetty, gave the fisherman a wet but withering stare through the drizzling rain. “Really,” he managed.  
  
The old Nord shook his head, beaming. “ _That’s_  the End of the World! The tavern, up there, on the left! Warm beds, good food and fine ale, at fair prices!”

“Do they pay you to do this, or can you simply not resist inflicting that awful joke on every newcomer?” Ire shook his head. “Never mind. I suppose the information is welcome, despite the delivery method. Make sure the Dunmer behind me gets it too, won’t you?” Boots skidding in the mud, he began trudging uphill towards the lights of the village.  
  
Dagon Fel, in the far northern regions of what could still be considered Morrowind, was populated largely by Nords. That was the first thing Iriel learned about it. The second, more interesting, thing was that it was surrounded by Dwemer ruins, including Mzuleft, which was at the top of his list. At least, it had been. His list of intended Dwemer research locations had been a casualty of Julan’s destructive rampage through his room, during which he had, among other things, destroyed large swathes of Iriel’s notes.  
  
When he’d arrived home and surveyed the damage, part of Ire had been glad to see it all go: the last guilt-inducing evidence of a project now permanently mired in failure and despair. Now, seeing the towers in the distance again, he felt a surge of defiance.  
  
 _Perhaps it isn’t over. Not now, but… I could come back. Investigate. I still have the book to translate, and my theories are in my head, he couldn’t destroy those._  
  
The buildings were tall and stone, Nordic style, topped with heavy thatched roofs. Ire pushed open the door of the End of the World tavern to find a roaring fire, and a flaxen-braided matron behind the bar. She gave Iriel a formulaic smile as he entered, but her attention was being monopolised by the Dunmer woman in front of her. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Ire heard her blandly inform the Dunmer’s scowling brows, “but there isn’t anything I can rightly do.”  
  
“Of course there is!” the austerely dressed Dunmer shot back in a furious whisper. “You can rally all these big Nord lugs who drink here all day, and get them to deal with him!”  
  
“And how should they deal with him?”  
  
“Kill him, of course, as he richly deserves! Look at him, just sitting there!”  
  
She pointed, and Iriel’s gaze followed to a small, middle-aged Nord, seated at the end of the bar. He had a neatly-clipped brown beard, long hair tied at the nape of his neck, and his red and green robe was unusually ornate, for a fishing village. Quite aware he was being discussed, he smiled, and gave a small, apologetic wave.  
  
The landlady’s lips tightened into a brief, sympathetic grimace as she met the Dunmer’s outraged eyes. “I  _know_ , but… he’s only drinking mead, Inera.”  
  
“For how long? He’s a necromancer, everyone knows it! How long before it’s your daughter’s virgin blood he’s drinking, out of the skull of your husband? How long, Fryfnhild?” Inera stared her down. “It’s disgusting, what he’s doing up there in that tower. An affront to all the ancestors of this land. If there was a Tribunal Temple here, they would have gotten rid this abomination long ago!”  
  
Fryfnhild took up a rag and began buffing the bar. “I’m sure you’re right, but we’re just simple seafaring folk trying to mind our business.”  
  
“And letting him carry on with his, until it’s too late!” Inera pointed at the bearded man again. “Dark, evil magic! Depravity! Immoral practices! I see you, Sorkvild, and your time of reckoning shall come!”  
  
“Not in my tavern, though, Inera, please. Did you want those kwama eggs you came for, or–”  
  
“Not any more! I’ll not give my business to a place that serves foul necromancers!”  
  
At this point, the man, Sorkvild, tried to interject. “Necromancy is such a loaded term,” he said, his voice soothing and eloquent. “I understand local religious concerns, but my research is not primarily concerned with souls. Rather, I seek the medicinal benefits that might be derived from–”  
  
Inera held three fingers before her face, eyes blazing behind them. “Don’t you whisper these despicable justifications for your unnatural acts into my ear! Almsivi protect me!”  
  
“My good woman, I have never harmed innocents, and I have no intention of doing so, I assure you!” Sorkvild slid from his barstool and came forwards, hands open in supplication. Inera backed away, hissing, and he sighed. “Fryfnhild, my dear, I’m afraid I’m causing you trouble. I’ll take my leave now. Thank you for your excellent mead and kind hospitality.”  
  
Iriel had watched all this play out from the doorway. Seeing Sorkvild preparing to depart, guilt at his passivity twisted in his guts. “Wait! Don’t go, not because of her!” Everyone turned to look at him, and he flushed, and faltered. “I mean… he hasn’t done anything, she’s the one making a scene.”  
  
The Dunmer’s fiery eyes rounded on him. “And who are  _you?_ ”  
  
The sheer intensity of her scorn needled him, and he bristled, hands clenching. “I am a scholar of magic, and a student of both the Crystal Tower, and the Arcane University. And the charge of necromancy that you so casually fling around is an extremely serious one.” Heart pounding, he paused for breath, but seeing Inera’s frown deepen, he continued before she could interrupt.   
  
“Psychagogy is an complicated and misunderstood area of magic. I quite agree that the non-consensual binding of sentient souls is an appalling practice. But it’s also tragically common for mages to be persecuted simply for trying to study death and its causes! When this research pushes forward restoration magic and the healing arts! So in accusing this man of necromancy, I ask you, have you seen his experiments first hand? Do you have any actualevidence that he has harmed souls, living or dead? Or are you running your mouth purely on gossip, superstition and paranoia?”  
  
Inera opened and closed her mouth a few times, then huffed, and turned on her heel. “Bringing in your minions now, are you, Raven? I’ll not stay here, in this den of wicked sorcerers!” She pushed past Iriel, and out of the door.  
  
Sorkvild, bowing low with a look of deep sorrow and distress, edged in the same direction. “I really shall be going. I wish no trouble for others on my account, and Gilse will worry about me if I stay out any later. Good night, my dear.”  
  
When he had gone, Iriel cautiously approached the bar, where Fryfnhild was banging the glassware around. She took in his face, full of mortified apology, and dismissed it with a weary flick of her hand. Then, smoothing her apron and exhaling, she forced back her smile. “Welcome to Dagon Fel, stranger. How can I help you?”  
  



	114. blunt

There were no boats west to be had. Iriel had spent the day begging every shipowner he could find, but grizzled seamen were remarkably resistant to puppy-dog eyes.  
  
The captain of the boat he’d arrived on was intent on returning to Tel Mora, and recommended Ire do the same. “Until the winter storms abate, the route to Khuul won’t be safe, sera. I was a s'wit to try before First Seed. They run a strider up there from Ald'ruhn via Maar Gan, you’d do better going overland this time of year.”  
  
Iriel had been indignant. “I’m not going all that way! We could make it to Khuul, surely. I’ve sailed in worse winds than these with my pa!”  
  
“Go ask him to risk his boat then, boy, I won’t risk mine.”

As the sun sank, Ire sat perched on a wooden post at the docks, wind whipping through his hair, as he eyed up the boats and sucked bits of grilled fish out of his teeth. He was also talking to himself out loud, to the amusement of those around him. Right now, that meant the elderly Nord sailors reclining on benches along the sea front, who laughed, and occasionally offered him a pull from their bottle of greef, which he ignored.  
  
“Most of these are Nordic fishing ketch, you can tell from the painted eye designs, and the way the mizzen is aft of the mainmast, to give her enough frontal weight to face into the wind, when you’re trying to pull the nets up. Those two at the end are Dunmeri. I don’t know the local name for them, but judging by the shape and the lateen sail, they’re along similar lines to the fisher-vairns we have at home. My pa had one of those, but bigger. These here are too small for fishing, purely recreational.” He wrinkled his nose at the one on the far end, with the red sail, and the sloppily painted Daedric lettering. “I’m not sure how much recreation you’d get out of that one, though. It’s barely afloat.  
  
"It’s been a while, but I bet I could sail some of these,” he continued, head on one side, peering at the rigging. “Not the bigger ones, but some are doable, single-handed. Sails like  _that_  one do better tacking into the wind than your big three-mast jobs with your square-rig setups. You just have to know how to handle them. Gods, if I had the money, I’d buy one off someone and head along the coast myself. I’ll bloody well swim to Urshilaku Camp before I’ll go back to Sadrith Mora and start all over again.  
  
"I know what you’re thinking.” The old sailors shook their heads at each other, grinning, as the skinny Altmer lad with the strange accent smoothed his hair back and straightened his spine. “I know you think I’d stoop to anything,” he said, “but for your information, I’d never steal someone else’s boat. Places like this, your boat’s your livelihood. I do have  _some_  morals,  _some_  standards. Actually. For your information.”  
  
He fell back into a slouch. “It’s true I used to fantasise about sinking my pa’s boat, when I was little. Not with him in it, of course! Just so he’d have to be at home more. I was too small to realise that if he did, we wouldn’t have any money. I worried that it would make him sad, though. And it would have, he loved his boats, did my pa. Loves, I mean. Present tense. As far as I know.” He swung his legs, staring out to sea.  
  
“He had two, during my childhood. One called  _Cinteril’s Song_ , after my ma, which was wrecked overnight in a harbour storm, when I was eight or nine. Long after I’d stopped wishing to destroy it, but I still felt vaguely guilty. After that, he got one he called  _Lightbringer_ , which I think was either a lighthouse he’d known and loved, or an epithet of Auri-El. Fishermen are really superstitious, that’s why all their boat names are so boring. They’re too scared to name them anything unusual in case the sea disapproves, and swallows it.”  
  
The wind swept in from the hills around the island, bringing rain. Iriel shivered, and slid off his post. “I’m going back to the inn,” he said, hunching into his comberry cape. “There’s got to be  _someone_ in this blighted hole willing to offer me a ride.” He glanced sidelong at a deserted post a short distance away. “I don’t know where you spent last night, but if you can’t afford a room, that’s not my problem. Nobody’s forcing you to be here at all.”  
  
  
It took a while, but eventually the Nord sidled over from where he’d been nursing a solitary sujamma at the bar, and sat down opposite Iriel at his corner-table.   
  
“Sooo.” He grinned sheepishly, and pushed a hank of sand-coloured hair away from a blue-inked cheekbone.  "Am I imagining things, or–“  
  
"No.”  
  
“No I’m not imagining things, or no you’re not–”  
  
“You’re not imagining things. I’m interested.”  
  
“In…?”  
  
“Oh, please. I’ve been exchanging the look with you for a good half-hour. Any longer, and I’ll be too drunk to follow through on it, so are you up for something, or not?”  
  
The Nord laughed. “Blunt, aren’t you?”  
  
“I’ve had two sheins, and I’m leaving town tomorrow, one way or another. I have so few fucks to give, they’re negligible.”  
  
“…Ladies’ underwear?”  
  
“Statistically non-existent.”  
  
“You lost me.”  
  
“That’s fine, ‘lost’ is my type, apparently. Listen carefully: I think you’re cute. I’m going to my room now, are you coming?”  
  
“ _Very_  blunt! I’ll tell you now, you’re not my usual type. Never been with an elf before.”  
  
“Oh gods. Look, I’m sorry to hear you don’t get out much, but if you’re going to get funny ideas about us being ancestral enemies, forget it. I’m not looking for any kinky shit tonight, I just want to fuck.”  
  
The Nord grinned, nodded, and followed him obediently out of the bar.  
  
“Ow!” The rentable rooms were in another building, a brief step across a dark cobbled courtyard. Hearing his companion yelp, Iriel glanced backward. “Did you trip?”  
  
“No, I… could have sworn someone kicked me, but there’s no one. Must be drunker than I thought.”  
  
Ire snorted. “Is that the best you can do?” he said to the surrounding darkness. “Pathetic.”  
  
The Nord’s eyes widened. “Me?”  
  
“No!”  
“Then who?”  
“No one!”  
“Huh?”  
“Oh, come on!”  
  
  
  
“…Someone’s knocking again.”  
“Well for fuck’s sake don’t fucking answer it!!”  
“Aye, but they’re not going away. Maybe I’d better see what–”  
“Ugh, if you must. The key’s in the lock.”  
  
The teenage Nord girl was jittering from foot to foot, wringing her apron. “I’m awful sorry to bother you,” she said, all in a rush, “but everyone’s gotta get out! The thatch is on fire!”  
  
  
  
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?” Iriel stood on the midnight beach, seemingly alone, fully aware he wasn’t. The rest of the town, including the sandy-haired Nord, were still gathered around the inn, helping to spot stray embers, and directing those scrambling across the thatch with buckets.  
  
“Messing with  _me_  is one thing, but you could have killed somebody! Burned down the entire village!” The rain-soaked straw was dense enough that there had been little risk of the small blaze getting out of control, but Ire wasn’t about to let details get in the way of righteously angry principle. “When you told Tilde my record for worst breakup was impossible to beat, I didn’t realise you’d taken it as a challenge! Just… what the  _fuck?!_ ”  
  
“Careful, now,” said a soft-spoken Nordic voice behind him. “If you go around shouting to yourself in the middle of the night, people will think you’re a dangerous menace to society, like me.”  
  
Sorkvild the Raven smiled, his hands folded into the sleeves of his robe. “I wanted to thank you for your thoughtful words, yesterday. I have found precious little support for my studies, in these parts. Other Nords consider what I do 'creepy’, and as for the natives, well. You met the local representative of Dark Elven religious opinion. I fear it’s only a matter of time before their hostility boils over, and somebody summons the Ordinators. I’m beginning to think I shall have to relocate. Solstheim, perhaps? Low temperatures are an advantage. But I digress. Might I ask your name?”  
  
“Iriel. I gather you’re Sorkvild?”  
  
“I am.” He bowed, then nodded in the direction of the inn. “I understand there has been some trouble. I heard the commotion from inside my study, and the walls are rather thick, as you can imagine.” He pointed to a small Dwemer tower, a little way outside the village walls. “Is there anything I can do?”  
  
Ire scanned the distant crowd again. His too-brief encounter was directing confused guests, the teenage maid clinging to his elbow… an elbow Ire realised was clad in his shirt. He looked down.  _Hmm. Blue stripes. Rather baggy, but it could be worse. At least when I get clothes from Nords, the arms are long enough._  
  
With a sigh, he gave up on that particular local attraction. Right now, he only wanted to sleep. “Can I stay the night at your place?” he asked. “Dwemer towers are hard to burn down, no matter how much of a pyromaniac your shitbag ex is.”   
  
Sorkvild beamed. “I would be delighted! I can tell you all about my research!”  
  



	115. flesh

“Are you sure you won’t let Gilse fix you some breakfast? She makes a fine wickwheat griddle cake.”  
  
“Just the tea. Thank you.” Iriel dug his nails into his thighs beneath the table, and forced the corners of his mouth upwards.  
  
Sorkvild extended his lower lip in mild bemusement: have it your way. He returned to his own loaded plate, pushing forkfuls of wickwheat through his moustache, one after the other.

Gilse entered with a mug of canis root tea in her bony hand. She held it out to Iriel with a nod. He closed his eyes, dug his nails deeper. “On… on the table, please.”  
  
She shrugged, and placed it before him in a sequence of softly audible clicks. He couldn’t repress a slight whimper, but when he opened his eyes, she had moved to stand next to Sorkvild.  
  
“It’s a rare pleasure for me to have company at meal times,” Sorkvild said cheerfully. “Gilse’s the light of my life, but as you can see, she needs more meat on her bones!” He laughed, and tapped her on the hip, playfully. “She doesn’t agree, though, prefers to travel light, don’t you, my love?”  
  
He smiled indulgently. “I grew her eyeballs back for her, once, when I was afraid I was forgetting their colour. She thought I was a sentimental old fool. Whatever she wants, I don’t mind. She’ll always be beautiful to me.” Gilse tousled his hair with ivory fingers, then took his empty plate and turned away.  
  
When the skeleton had gone, Ire released the full-body shudder he had been holding in check. He knew it was rude, but screaming would be ruder, and it was one or the other. He stared at the mug. After a moment, he pulled his shirt-sleeve over his hand, and picked up his tea through it. He peered into the mug. Sniffed. Replaced it on the table.  
  
“If it’s still too hot, perhaps you’d like to bring it with you to my study?” Sorkvild ventured politely, when five minutes brought Ire no closer to drinking anything. He nodded gratefully, and followed his host, surreptitiously leaving the mug behind.  
  
They walked through the small Dwemer tower, made to feel remarkably domestic, despite the exposed machinery and rusted metal. There were fresh stoneflowers on a table in a brass jug, and someone had arranged half a dozen ancient cogs along a shelf, in order of size. Some of the hot pipes were drying washing, and Iriel had to duck to avoid damp robes and tea-towels.  
  
As they approached a ladder to the floor above, two more skeletons appeared from a side-room, one tall and broad-ribbed, the other smaller, and slightly bow-legged. Ire yelped, and scooted behind Sorkvild, who grinned, and waved. The larger skeleton waved back, and the smaller made a series of hand gestures.   
  
Sorkvild nodded. “I know! Isn’t it lovely?” he said to the skeleton. Then he turned to Iriel. “Minedhel says good morning,” he beamed. “He says there’s twice as much breath in the place today. The big fellow with him is Hlora. The two of them used to be adventurers together, Bosmer thief and Nord warrior. They were quite the successful duo, they claim. Until they tried to raid my last tower!” He began laughing heartily. “Since then, we’ve come to an arrangement, haven’t we, boys? We’re all fine friends now.”  
  
The larger skeleton snapped its teeth together a couple of times, and Sorkvild laughed louder. “Ahhh, Hlora’s such a joker. We do have our fun.” Shaking his head and chuckling, he climbed the ladder and cranked open the metal trap-door.  
  
Sorkvild’s study was a charnel-house. Bones were arrayed on every surface, from the huge desk-cum-workbench that dominated the room to the shelves that lined the walls. Any spaces between the bones were filled with books, alchemical apparatus and components. Twenty-four hours ago, Iriel would have been aghast at sharing a room with so much calcium, but right now, the fact that none of it was waving or serving him tea made it unthreatening by comparison.  
  
Sorkvild was rubbing his hands and practically skipping around his desk. “Please, look around, please. Be my guest. Ask any questions you’d like!”  
  
Iriel wavered, feeling like a fly in a spider’s web, although he wasn’t sure why. Rational thought told him that he ought to be worried Sorkvild was about to murder him for his bones, but all his instincts were convinced the strange, excitable Nord genuinely meant him no harm. His current nerves arose from fear of giving offence, of his obvious ostiophobia hampering any attempt to show interest in Sorkvild’s work. But he couldn’t leave until he’d tried - he owed his host that much.  
  
Veering away from a full skeleton prostrated along a bookshelf between texts on corpse preparation, Iriel’s gaze fell on a small, framed, watercolour portrait on Sorkvild’s desk. A Dunmer woman with short, fiery red hair and a heart-shaped face looked back at him, smiling impishly. He swallowed, and sought Sorkvild’s eye. “Is this… her? The… Downstairs?”  
  
Sorkvild beamed proudly. “Of course! Who could mistake my Gilse? She disapproves of my keeping that, you know, turns it face-down every time she cleans. She wants me to live in the present. But I do! I do, and I see the same thing when I look at her now as I do in this portrait: the woman I fell in love with. Her essential qualities persist across time and flesh.”  
  
As Ire stared at the picture, brow knitted, Sorkvild continued on, striding around the room, gesturing like an orator. “I was a professional healer, then. I trained in Solitude, but I came to Mournhold for reasons that no longer matter. She was a Temple novice assigned as my assistant. Soon, she became my beloved… and then my patient, when the wasting sickness began to take hold. All we knew for sure was that the disease dwelt in the bone, interfering with her blood, weakening her, day by day. We tried everything. She was so brave. No experimental treatment was too dangerous or painful for her to endure. All she would insist was that we took thorough notes, documented everything. So that even if she did not survive, my next patient might benefit from her outcome, make her suffering worth something. Death does not diminish, she would recite to me, from her scripture. She was never afraid of dying, only of leaving me alone.” He clenched a fist, held it to his heart.  
  
“I know how it sounds, to most people,” he said, with a wry smile. “The old story. Mage fails to accept loved one’s death, mage turns to forbidden necromantic rituals, mage raises the dead. Certainly, we found ourselves no longer welcome in the City of Light, and have been moving north ever since. But you must understand: while others wish to label me a necromancer, in my view, I have never stopped being a healer. They condemn my methods and my results, but I practice the arts of restoration. I increase life, not death. And I was so close to a breakthrough, when she died. Together, we can continue our work towards a cure, to heal wasting bones, in others. As for her, blessing of blessings, she is safe. Fleshless, her disease has no grip on her. But even if I were to craft her a flawless new body, neither of us would want it, now. What does flawless mean anyway? She is my Gilse. We have learned to cherish each other through all our changes. This is love, yes?”  
  
Iriel was frowning, lips pressed together, fingers twitching erratically. “How can you be sure it’s really her,” he finally burst out. “Once the soul has left the body, whatever you call back isn’t necessarily… I mean… even with very careful psychotropic management, there’s no guarantee that…”  
  
“Of course I’m sure it’s her. It’s true that she’s slower, in some ways. She can’t do everything she used to. Her capacity for magic, of course, is gone forever. Reading and writing, she has not yet regained, though I still hope she may make progress. Healing is a long journey, and I allow her to guide me.”  
  
Ire exhaled, began chewing his lip. “I’m not saying you didn’t get  _something_  back,” he ventured. “An animating energy, possessing a certain… simulated awareness, able to learn what you expect from it, perhaps even to… reflect your desires, to an extent, and behave in a manner that lets you believe…” he trailed off, unnerved by the way Sorkvild was looking at him, head tilted to one side, a pitying smile on his lips.  
  
“Have you never loved someone,” the Nord said softly, “loved them in such a way that you could never mistake them, no matter what form they took? Even if they could no longer speak to you, or touch you in the same ways? Have you never loved somebody to their soul?”  
  
Iriel was still formulating a response (he’d got as far as “No”) when the trap-door flew open, and Gilse’s white skull appeared. It swivelled towards Sorkvild, and nodded quickly, twice. His face immediately darkened. “Something serious,” he said, as Gilse vanished from view. “We had better go and see what the matter is.”  
  
  
They were howling abuse and banging on the cast iron door with shovels. Hlora and Minedhel had piled metal kegs in front of it, but it wouldn’t last long. There was a muffled explosion, and the kegs rocked.  
  
Sorkvild grimaced. “They appear to have a battlemage out there. Not bad, for a fishing village. Gilse, pack up the study. It’s time to move again.”  
  
“SORKVILD YOU HEARTLESS FIEND,” came a Dunmeri scream from outside. “YOU HAVE THREATENED US WITH YOUR VILE MAGIC FOR THE LAST TIME!”  
  
“What are they talking about?” Iriel squeaked. “Why attack now?” He had a horrible feeling he knew the answer.  
  
“The inn fire would be my guess,” said Sorkvild, confirming it. “Or perhaps they think I’ve kidnapped you.” Ire covered his face and moaned.  
  
“How will you get out?” he asked desperately, as Gilse dashed past him, cradling an armful of bones. “Do you have an escape route planned?”  
  
“Not as such, no.” Sorkvild was opening a cupboard, ferreting around behind kwama eggs and jars of comberry jam. “Intervention is ineffective this far north, and my Recall point is here. What I  _do_ have prepared is my boat down at the docks, and a small amount of misdirection.” He pulled out a round shape. It was about the size of a melon, and covered in brown hair. He turned it to face Iriel, grinning manically. “Spot the difference!”  
  
“It’s…” Ire fought down a surge of nausea. “It’s… supposed to be you?”  
  
The mage pouted. “It’s an excellent likeness! Skull of an Imperial male, with surface matter woven from Scampskin, padded out with a few rats! Then I seeded it with just a dab of my own flesh, and watched it go! Grew all its own hair! Telvanni fleshcraft is amateur hour by comparison. Do you like the fresh blood effect? It’s not possible to keep it looking recently severed using ordinary means, so it’s a mixture of scrib jelly and–”  
  
“But what are you going to do with it?!”  
  
Sorkvild smiled. “Under the circumstances, the question becomes, what are  _you_ going to do with it,” he said.


	116. spite

Many people of an anxious, self-conscious disposition have a special place in their mental hells reserved for public speaking. The mere thought fuels their nightmares and haunts their waking hours. The dreadful prospect of their every nervous tic and fumbled word being amplified and projected to a goggling roomful of judgemental eyes.  
  
For the rest of his life, Iriel would console himself with the thought that, however terrifying a particular social ordeal might be, it couldn’t go as badly as the time he gave a speech to an angry mob.

The crowd roared as the Dwemer doors, weakened by spells, finally gave way to muscled shoulders, scattering the kegs piled against the inside. Pouring into the tower’s antechamber, the villagers found Iriel standing alone, rooted to the spot by inertia and guilt. Sometimes, he wondered if he possessed other motivations. He had no notes or cue-cards, but Sorkvild’s ‘head’ swung gently from his fingers by its hair.  
  
If he’d had the slightest amount more time to prepare, he could have worked himself up into a proper state of incapacitated panic, but he hadn’t. Instead, the instantaneous shove to the top of his scale of horror had knocked him into a dreamlike state where everything about the situation was so ridiculous it no longer felt real.  
  
He looked at the angry mob. They were clutching makeshift weapons, and everything. Some had put more thought into their choice than others. Ire saw one man holding a fishing pole.  
  
 _What’s he going to do, hook me? I hope he’s at least baited it. What would work best? Skooma? Sweetrolls? Cocks?_  
  
Overcome by mental images, he started giggling, the severed head twitching where it hung from his shaking hand. A few nervous glances passed among the crowd.  
  
The Dunmer woman, Inera, led the snarling horde, a staff in one hand, the other clenched before her, swathed in pale golden light. “I thought I might find you here, Altmer,” she hissed. “This land is filling with n'wah coming to disrespect our holy ground. But I’m here for the Raven, not you. Where is he? Send him out before we tear him out!”  
  
He suddenly remembered another motivating force in his life. Spite. Sheer, stubborn, bloody-mindedness. The impulse to do things purely because they’d get up the noses of people who didn’t approve of him. Sometimes, this simply meant refusing to lie down and die. In this case, it meant launching into an abusive tirade, dragged from strange corners of his short-circuited brain.  
  
“Your pathetic crusade comes too late, foul temptress,” he declaimed, in a voice he hadn’t used since reading aloud to Firionwe from the  _The Witch-Queen of Sombrewing_ , some fifteen years earlier. “He whom you would destroy has perished, slain by my sword for the malefactions of his blackened soul!” He hoped they wouldn’t question his lack of a sword, or indeed the fact he was quoting freely and light-headedly from Ralentir’s climactic battlement speech in  _Duskstone_  book 4.  
  
In the original scene, Ralentir is referring to his wife Lindaale, the heroine of the series, and whose death he is currently attempting to falsify. Iriel had no trouble smoothly converting the female pronouns into male as the speech flowed from his unconscious memory. If you had informed teenage Iriel that his covert creation of gender-swapped Duskstone fiction would one day come to aid him in this manner, it’s hard to say what his reaction would have been. (Actually, it’s not. It would have involved a lot of horrified screaming and demands to get the fuck out of his bedroom.)  
  
Inera’s face contracted in suspicion, or possibly just confusion at the 'temptress’ charge. Iriel had to admit that had been less than appropriate. It was, frankly, problematic in the original, but this wasn’t the time to start updating it. Instead, by way of distraction, Ire threw the fleshcrafted head at her. She screamed, and batted it away towards a nearby Nord. It began to bounce over the crowd like a dripping, necrotic beachball.  
  
Behind Iriel, Sorkvild, Gilse and the others lay in wait, veiled beneath an invisibility spell. The mob was blocking the entrance, but if enough of them left, or plunged in deeper to loot the tower, they had a chance of slipping out, and getting to the docks.  
  
Iriel knew perfectly well he couldn’t demoralise a hostile horde with a defiant speech of bittersweet victory. Ralentir could, though, and Ire’s adrenalised brain maintained the illusion (delusion?) for a few more seconds. “Return to your homes, swinish peasants!” he intoned, imaginary black silk cloak billowing in the non-existent moonlight. “There is nothing for you here, save the bones of my forefathers and the ashes of my hopes.”  
  
Perhaps mentioning “bones” was the mistake, because Inera’s eyes narrowed. “You claim the Raven is dead, but what of his undead minions? Do they still infest the tower, an affront to the spirits and the saints?” As Ire opened and closed his mouth in hesitation, she smiled horribly. “No matter. I have prepared holy words to bind their allegiance to me, and draw them out. Turn Undead!”  
  
Raising her hand, she began chanting, swelling the golden light in her hands until it glowed incandescent with faith. It grew larger, filling Ire’s vision. Soon, he could see nothing else, and his dazzled eyes were forced shut. Behind him, Sorkvild roared, “No! Stop her!!”, but too late.  
  
With a howl, Inera launched the spell. Iriel felt the magic stream through him, dancing along his nerves and sending sparks from every hair on his body, but it didn’t harm him. It wasn’t designed to. At his back, he heard a sound like a black hole sneezing. He heard the scraping and grinding of bones. He heard Sorkvild, begging Gilse to look at him, to remember. He heard tearing cloth, and bones clashing louder. Sorkvild beginning to scream. The moist, wrenching separation of flesh and bone. Sorkvild ceasing to scream.  
  
The things Iriel saw, after he opened his eyes, he never got out of his head, though he often tried. A thrashing maelstrom of red and white, filtered through the spell’s glowing after-images, gradually resolving into nightmarish details. Strands of brown hair snagged between snapping teeth. Skeletal hands pulling out strings of entrails, every metacarpal moving in delicate concert. A blue eye, speared on a thumb like a cocktail stick.  
  
Transfixed by the horror of the moment, he didn’t register the villagers’ approach until strong arms pinned him, and voices thundered around his ears. “Liar!” “Sorcerer!” “Raven’s minion!” “Kill him!” He didn’t have it in him to resist.  
  
They dragged him outside. Began debating whether to run him through or string him up.  _Finally a use for the fishing line_ , he thought, hazily. He was shoved, sent reeling, seized again, shaken. Something cracked him across the jaw, he didn’t see what. As the noise and tumult competed with the ringing in his ears, it took a moment for Iriel to realise people were no longer shouting “Liar!”, but “Fire!”  
  
“Fire at the inn!” “The thatch is aflame again!” “Quick, catch it before it spreads!”  
  
The hands gripping him loosened, one after another, and he was left to sink onto all fours in the mud, as more and more people began running back towards the village. He raised his head, squinting through the hair falling over his face. This was not the minor blaze of the previous night. This time, the entire roof was a raging inferno, lighting the sky like a second sunrise.  
  
  
When Iriel skidded into the docks, the only soul there was Julan, slumped against the wall of a fisherman’s shack. He met Ire’s eye briefly, then returned his gaze to the ground.  
  
“Don’t expect thanks,” Iriel croaked, between desperate lungfuls of air. “This entire mess was your fault to begin with.” He began scanning the boats, reading the names painted along their prows. He got to the end of the row, and the small red-sailed yacht, tethered away from the others.  _Undiminished_ , the messy Daedric script spelled out.  
  
“Of course it’s that one.” Ire rubbed his face, smearing mud across his brow and cheek. “Of course. But at least I’m not stealing it, now.”  
  
He untied the painter, pulled the boat closer to the jetty and lowered his pack inside. When he looked up, Julan hadn’t moved, and was staring at the boat with unmixed horror. “Get the fuck in,” he said. “This will be considerably easier with two. Even an undead minion can hold onto a rope, can’t it?”  
  
As the sail filled and the boat slid away from the jetty, a red-white flash along the shore caught Iriel’s eye. Three blood-covered skeletons were moving, in swift single file, away from the tower, striking out into the wilderness. As he watched, the head of the smallest turned towards the boat. There was nothing in her hollow eyes but mindless rage, and that convinced Iriel of her identity more than anything else he’d seen. She raised a hand, waved. Mechanically, he waved back. Then he returned his attention to the sail, guiding the small vessel out into the rocky waters of Sheogorad.  
  



	117. exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Blood, mouth injury, tooth injury. More blood. The most awful striptease ever. I'm... just so sorry.

Beneath the force of the colossal wave, the boat disintegrated completely. Iriel had seen it coming, but, steering desperately, had hoped they might make it closer to shore before it hit. It wasn’t to be. The strength of the wind was tearing through the sails, tilting her sideways, and in the clinging panic to hold on, Ire had lost the alteration spells that were the last thing keeping the water on the right side of the battered hull.

He’d taken the small craft along the northern edge of Sheogorad Island. Although tacking into the wind, their size and manoeuvrability had allowed Ire to take narrower, more sheltered paths between the islands and avoid the worst excesses of the Sea of Ghosts. Despite slow going at first, and a few minor skirmishes with rocks and sandbars, he’d been surprised by how well he’d handled it. The real trouble had come late in the day, when he’d tried to bring them south, back towards the mainland.  
  
Passing through a narrow south-eastern strait, the shores of Vvardenfell had come into view just as the full force of the west wind hit the sail. He’d thought they were ready for it, but he’d been wrong. Julan, instructed to hold on to the mainsheet, had had the rope ripped near-clean out of his hands. He’d managed not to lose the end, but the boom had swung wild for a moment, the shifting weight dragging the boat off-balance. Iriel, hurling himself out of the way of the boom, had collided face-first with the gunwhale. Ignoring the pain, he’d scrambled to secure the sheet, and regain control of the sail, spitting blood and holding on grimly. He’d succeeded, but on looking up, found they were headed straight into the rocks.  
  
Amid screams and frantic hauling on ropes and tiller, the boat had veered to starboard at the last second. Only to be immediately swept out into the crashing current of the wide channel separating Vvardenfell from the archipelago, where the unfettered wind combined with the waves to hurl them helplessly eastwards, sail ripping free.  
  
Julan, clinging to the stern, saw the huge wave rising, and cried out hoarsely, his face a mask of terror. He’d been silent but obedient for the duration of the journey, and Ire’d had his hands too full to pay him much attention, even if he’d had the slightest inclination to chat. Now, as he pushed past Julan to wrench at the tiller, and aim the boat towards the beach, it occurred to Iriel that he had no idea how well the other elf could swim. Not that it would make any difference, in these waters.  
  
Already soaked and freezing, the sudden liquid embrace as the sea surged in to take him was almost comforting. But then another wave crashed over Ire’s head, the planks lurched away beneath him, water gushed painfully up his nose, and then the terror hit. He was drowning. A dark chaos of sea and ship filled his vision, and he lost down from up, swept over and under.  
  
He knew he had seconds before his lungs sucked in water, or he was knocked unconscious, knew what he needed to do, but the words for the water breathing spell wouldn’t come. This was why he’d made potions, but he’d left it too late now, his bag was long gone. Chest bursting, senses clogged with blackness, his brain dragged other words from arcane memory, and his fingers moved.  
  
His head burst above the surface, and his body followed, propelled violently upwards. He coughed and spluttered, struggling for balance. The water walking spell was maintaining him on the surface, but the surface was a roiling mass of waves. No longer threatened by drowning, he was now at risk of being smashed to pieces by liquid he’d convinced the universe counted as a solid, when applied to him.  
  
He tried standing, but barely reached all fours before the sea sagged beneath him, flinging him into a trough. He felt it rolling purposefully, rising up, taking him with it. He was crested higher and higher, too stunned to do anything but cling to the sharp-slick edge and stare down at the remains of the little boat: the dark sail spreading like a bloodstain amid a tangle of ropes. He couldn’t see Julan at all. At the top of its arc, the wave broke, flicked him like a fly, and then he  _was_ flying, hurtling towards the shore.  
  
Ire landed hard in soft ash-sand that still knocked the breath out of him. He rolled, helpless, until he hit a muckspunge with a wet thwack. He couldn’t move for some time, during which two thoughts circled numbly around his spinning head:  _I’m alive. Julan must be dead._  
  
He wasn’t, though, because a few seconds later, Ire heard dragging, scraping movements through wet sand, accompanied by familiar coughing, retching and waterlogged groans.  
  
Ire’s head lolled back, and he watched dumbly as a bone-coloured moon broke through the clouds above him, followed by its hulking red twin. His heartbeat was pulsing through his whole body, vibrating into the ash beneath him. For a moment, he wondered if he was imagining a faint, slow, answering rhythm. Then, as his heart and consciousness began returning to normal, he forgot.  
  
 _I did it. Barely. By the skin of my… ugh._ His mouth was salty iron, and his upper jaw numb and awful, where he’d hit it. Still, he was suffused by brief, brittle exhilaration. _If this implies the sea disapproves of me, then it also implies I’m capable of surviving its disapproval. Fuck you, sea, better luck next time!_  He closed his eyes, shaking weakly with laughter.  
  
Soon, the laughter had passed, but he was still shaking. Thankful he hadn’t blacked out and slipped into full-on hypothermia, he rolled over and forced his bruised body onto grazed hands and knees. Clawing at the muckspunge and moaning like a tragic actor, he finally gained enough verticality to look around.   
  
He suspected he wasn’t nearly as close to Urshilaku camp as he had hoped, but he was, at least, in the Ashlands. Bleak hills loomed around him, distinguishable from the charcoal sky only by very minor alterations in shade, where the intermittent moonlight hit.  
  
It had begun to rain, grim and insistent. Shelter and warmth had to come before anything else. A Daedric ruin squatted on the western horizon, all tortured angles. Not that way, then. Something pale and softly domed was humped in the ash a little way inland. For an irrational moment, he thought it was an enormous skull. Steeling his nerve and staggering closer, he identified it as the shell of a dead silt strider, intact enough to keep the driftwood-strewn ground beneath it dry.  
  
Returning to the beach, Iriel approached the rasping heap of sodden Dunmer still crumpled below the tide-line. “Hey,” he croaked. “I found a dry place. I’m going to make a fire. Are you… can you…?”  
  
“Leave me alone, you n'wah.” Julan’s voice was rougher than the rocks he’d collapsed onto, but his tone was unmistakeable, and Iriel’s brief candle of concern flickered out.  
  
“Fine,” he snapped. “Get pneumonia! See if I care! See if I give th– oh fucktthh!” He broke off, as the act of speaking caused a loosened tooth to give horribly under his tongue. He moaned, and forced it back in place, trying not to vomit.  
  
“Ffffuck. Fuck thish.” Ire reeled across the sand, dripping blood and tears indiscriminately. “Fuck everything about thish. Fuck bonesh, fuck boatsh, and fuck Ashlandersh, especially  _you_.” He restrained himself from the impulse to kick Julan, although more from exhaustion than anything else. “Shtay here, then. If you get cold, light yourself on fucking fire. Sheo-fucking-gorath!!”  
  
  
Half an hour later, Ire’s mood had been somewhat soothed by the successful kindling of a comforting blaze. Still, he directed a scathing look into the shadows outside the shell when he heard unsteady footsteps, and saw a dark shape slump down against a rock a few yards away. He removed his fingers from his mouth, where he’d been feebly attempting a healing spell.  
  
“You can come in if you want,” he said, stiffly. “I won’t  _bite_. I’m going to hang my clothes up to dry, and you should too. Don’t worry, I can guarantee you a  _complete_  absence of sexual tension. You could be washed, nude, even oiled up with Telvanni bug musk, and I’d still rather screw a dead slaughterfish.”  
  
When Julan didn’t move, Ire paused in hanging his comberry cape over some driftwood, and narrowed his eyes. “What is it, then? You’re just here to observe? Make sure I don’t sneak off in the night? Seriously?”  
  
He straightened out the cape near the flames, steam rising from it in hazy ribbons. Removed his boots, and set them upside down to drain. Glanced sideways into the dark. Suddenly laughed, dry and gasping.  
  
He went and stood in the shell’s arched opening, his angular frame illuminated by the fire. “Do you know what this reminds me of?” he said. He was grinning strangely, the bloody mess around his upper-left canine not exactly improving the effect. “Jail! I feel I’m back in my cosy little cell, with a dutiful guard posted right outside. For my own good, of course. To keep a watchful eye on me, in case I do anything  _silly_. It’s so easy to get careless and hurt yourself, when you’re a poor broken mad thing.” He raised his eyebrows and sighed, still smiling.  
  
“It’s a funny old place, jail. In odd ways, it frees you. From shame, for example. Shame is for people with something left to lose, somewhere further to fall. I used to feel so sorry for those guards, sat there all day, with only me to look at. I used to put on little shows for them, when I was in the mood.” He started undoing the buttons of his wet shirt. “Is that why you’re here? For the show?”  
  
Reaching the end of the buttons, he slowly peeled off his shirt and tossed it outside. There was a gravelly sigh of disgust from the darkness, and Ire collapsed into giggles.  
  
A voice came from the shadows, hoarse and irritable. “This isn’t about you. Or me. Get over yourself.”  
  
Iriel only laughed louder, leaning on the strider shell for support. “Not… about…? Ohhh, wait, I see it now. Of course, I’m so sorry.  _Obviously_ you’re only monitoring me as part of your critically important, deeply heroic mission. You have to be. Otherwise, you’d just be some pathetic, obsessed loser, stalking his ex, right? And that can’t be righ–aah!”  
  
He clapped his hands to his mouth again, a keening noise joining the blood leaking between his fingers. Then it deepened into a growl. He wrenched out the tooth, and threw it to follow his shirt. “Are you enjoying the sssshow yet?” he hissed, doubled over, strands of blood and saliva spooling into the ash.  
  
After a while, he raised his head. “I’ve spent my whole life being watched,” he said, parting the hair falling across his eyes with long, red-stained fingers. “I always hated it, and I always will, but… there  _can_ be power in it. Not always in the ways you want. The guards didn’t all appreciate my efforts to entertain them. But sometimes it’s not about what people  _appreciate_.” He was grinning again, worse then before, and the shadows in front of him had fallen silent. “I’m reminded of another show I used to put on sometimes, one I learned in school.  
  
"Someone had smacked me in the face before class. I don’t remember who. I think they took turns, you know, another dull but necessary task, like refilling the chalk. They didn’t even hit me that hard, but my lip hit my teeth, and split open, inside. You couldn’t tell by looking at me, but during the first lesson, my mouth kept filling with blood. I sat there, trying to swallow it, terrified someone would find out. Praying it’d stop bleeding, willing it to heal, wondering why bodies were so awful that they kept doing these horrible, counter-productive things.”  
  
He dipped a finger into the blood running down his damp chest, idly smearing it into vague watercolour designs as he spoke. A whorl around his nipple, trails of dots charting blurry constellations across his ribs.  
  
“The Sapiatus asked me a question, and I just shook my head. He moved on, but I could feel my heart beating faster, pumping more blood through my body, convincing me it was bleeding even faster, though it was probably just saliva. Either way, I couldn’t swallow fast enough to keep up with the flow. People started to give me funny looks.  
  
"The Sapiatus asked me another question. I didn’t answer. I was shaking. My mouth was full of blood. He asked again, and wouldn’t let it drop. Everyone was looking at me. And then I just…  _exploded_. All over myself, all over the boy in front of me. He screamed. Everyone screamed, including the Sapiatus. Everyone except me. I looked at their horrified faces, and I laughed and laughed and laughed. The class finished early. The Sapiatus had to go and lie down; he was never the same again. They sent me home for the rest of the day, and when I went back… I can’t say it improved my popularity, but… they hit me a lot less, after that.”  
  
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, neck and spine arched. Pushed his bloody fingers through his wet hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. Held the pose for a moment, hips angled and statuesque, skin a thousand shades of liquid gold in the firelight. He opened his eyes.  
  
“It isn’t much. But when someone’s looking at you, you have a choice. You can decide what to do with their gaze. Whether it’s play the monster, or… something else. Depending on the show.”  
  
Smirking, he flicked open his belt buckle. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I being manipulative again? Predatory?” With leisurely deliberation, he unbuttoned his fly and began edging down his pants, fixing his eyes on the twin red glows in the shadows all the while. “Good thing this isn’t about me, then.”  
  
He stepped out of his pants, kicked them forwards into the ash. “My life’s made me quite the connoisseur of voyeurs,” he said, sliding his thumbs beneath the waistband of his underwear, teasing them lower on his hips. “I know you still want me. You can’t have me. Not without force, and you won’t. Because you’ve been told that’s who you are, and you’re scared they might be right, but they’re not. That’s not a compliment, by the way, that’s clearing one of the lowest bars possible. You’re still a fucking mess, just not the kind you’ve been led to believe. But I know what you are, and you don’t scare me.”  
  
He flicked his underwear from the end of his toe into the night. Turning away, Iriel returned to his enclave of heat and light, and the darkness was left to its silence.  
  
  
(Commitment to accuracy over dramatic effect compels me to add that three seconds later, Ire scuttled out again to collect his clothes, muttering about needing to hang them up or they wouldn’t be dry in the morning.) 


	118. hurt

In the morning, Iriel found two kagouti, a nix-hound and a rat, dead in the dirt nearby. “I see you’ve been busy,” he told the other slumped body, identifiable as living only by the heavy breathing. “No  _tea?_ ” Julan’s lungs sounded congested.  _Honestly, what did he expect? There’s no helping some people._

Gathering fresh wood for the fire, Ire discovered his bag washed up on the rocks. The potions were smashed and the scrolls and papers ruined, but he salvaged what he could of the rest. His alchemy knives were usable, at least, and might help him replace some of his lost provisions.  
  
Back at his makeshift camp, he found Julan sitting up, dragging fingers through his matted hair, wincing. He stopped when he saw Iriel, lowering his hands with a scowl.  
  
Iriel barely glanced at him. With effort, he rolled one of the kagouti over, and began slicing at it with more enthusiasm than finesse. Silently observing the mutilation, Julan’s brow creased. Ire wondered if he was trying to remember how to laugh at him. “I’m quite aware I’m not following the correct protocol,” he said. “I suggest you keep watching me very closely and see if I care.”  
  
When they’d been over the fire long enough to change colour, Iriel decided the haphazard chunks he’d butchered were probably cooked. Tests proved cautiously positive, and he was too ravenous to be fussy. He shovelled several onto a scathecraw leaf, and pushed it into Julan’s unresisting hands with a pointed glare.  _Go on, claim I’m trying to poison you. Try me, I dare you._  
  
Julan didn’t dare - or didn’t care. Either way, he ate the meat, and when Iriel was ready to leave, he followed without a word.   
  
  
The Daedric ruin blocked their progress west. Iriel gave it a wide berth, and might have succeeded in evading trouble, if not for Julan’s sudden, violent sneezing fit. After that, they had to deal with a couple of Scamps and, just as Ire thought the worst was over, a Dremora.  
  
Iriel was still getting his breath back after frost-balling the Scamps. They had both targeted him, Julan watching them all screech and flail at each other with studied disinterest. The Dremora was another matter. It was huge, and came charging out of the ruins, roaring like a volcanic freight train. Taken by surprise, Ire froze in terror. By the time he’d recovered enough to fumble his Shield spell twice, the Dremora was almost upon him, winding back its flamboyantly crenellated obsidian mace.  
  
Sweeping in low on its right flank, Julan whipped his glass blade into its knees. The blow didn’t bite deep, but the Dremora stumbled, bellowing in fury. Julan swung again, upwards into its mace-bearing arm. His tactics were sound, but what should have been a limb-severing blow only caused it to drop the weapon. Either its skin was tougher than glass, or, as Ire suspected, Julan’s strength wasn’t what it had been. He was already gasping for breath, and when the enraged Dremora forced him bodily to the ground, he barely resisted.  
  
Julan was somewhere underneath three hundred pounds of Daedric muscle, its hands clamped around his throat. Ire heard a sickening crack, as the remains of the bonemould cuirass gave in. He thought Julan was whimpering, till he realised it was himself. Clawing together his remaining magical energy, he began spellcasting.  
  
  
  
“Just like old times, isn’t it?” Ire remarked with an acidic smile, as Julan braced his sword against the Dremora’s neck. “Paralysing Daedra to get them off you, because you bit off more than you could chew.” Growling with the effort, Julan forced the blade through, producing a small localised implosion, as the Daedra’s mortal shell was sucked back out of Mundus.   
  
The hardest part had been getting Julan out from underneath the immobilised chunk of Oblivion. In the end, they’d managed to rock its weight far enough over to roll it back down the slope, resulting in a panting, careening scrabble after it, before the spell wore off.  
  
Julan collapsed onto his back again, coughing and wheezing. Ire regarded him crossly. “Why  _did_ you do that?” When Julan didn’t reply, his frown deepened. “Was that Dremora intruding on your territory, making you jealous? Wouldn’t want anyone else to hurt me, would you? That’s your job!” He snorted, and sank down into the ash next to Julan.  
  
“Do you need healing?” he asked, when the other elf’s breathing continued to sound dragged from the depths of a swamp.  
  
Julan’s eyes were closed, but he shook his head.  
  
“Good,” said Ire, “because you won’t get any from me.” After a moment, he mitigated this with, “All my potions are gone, and you know what I’m like at restoration. So I hope you can walk, because I really don’t want to have to drag you to civilisation, wherever that even is.” He grimaced, scanning the endless grey hills.  
  
“Before you say anything, no. I wouldn’t leave you here to die. Don’t get the wrong idea, though, it’s not out of sentiment. It’s pure self-interest. The same reason I fed you this morning: self-defence against your martyr complex. I refuse to let you force any more guilt into my life.”  
  
Hunched over bent knees, he tried to distract himself from poking his tongue through the raw gap in his teeth, yet again. Began eyeing a nearby kreshweed plant, wondering how it smoked, if it hadn’t been dried. Badly, no doubt. Sighing, he folded his arms and leaned his forehead into them.  
  
“I didn’t fall in love with you, you dragged me, kicking and screaming. With the sheer, claustrophobic intensity of your attention, with the look you got in your eyes when we fucked. Which, now that I think about it, is the same look you sometimes get when you’re fighting. Or drinking. This single-minded, self-destructive energy, like you’re throwing yourself into something you can’t win. But there’s nothing brave about it, really. You were running away in all sorts of ways, weren’t you? I was part of your cheap temporary rebellion. Books, booze and boys: another thing you weren’t supposed to have, but therein lies the thrill, right? Whatever would your mother think? Shani was right about you.” He closed his eyes. He could still hear Julan’s breathing, irregular and grating.  
  
“Do you know what really hurt? When I realised I could have been anyone. That you’d have devoted yourself to literally anyone foolish enough to let you. I only had to stand still long enough, throw you the few scraps I was emotionally capable of. All that guarshit you fed me about seeing my faults and liking me anyway? I want to go back and slap myself. Of course you didn’t care about my faults. You’d finally found someone even more useless and incapable than yourself, what a glorious novelty! You could turn yourself into my noble protector, distract yourself with taking care of me. Because the further you mash yourself into somebody else, the further you get from yourself. That’s why you’re still following me. It’s not about doing anything for your fucking people. It’s about you. You’re still running away.”  
  
Julan’s breathing was less laboured, but still hoarse. When the silence lengthened, Ire finally turned to look at him. He was sitting up, his dark eyes meeting Ire’s like distant red planets, seen across light-years of cold vacuum. “What would  _you_  know about doing things for other people,” he said.  
  
At another time, Iriel might have agreed with him, but right now, the hypocrisy was too much. “I know that if it was about your people, you’d have gone straight to the Urshilaku, and warned them!” he retorted. “But you don’t want to do that, do you? Because they’ll tell you to get lost, probably punch you in the face again for luck. You’d have to face up to the fact they don’t give a shit about you. They never did, and that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Well, it won’t work. You can’t fill the emptiness that way. You couldn’t fill it with Shani, you can’t fill it with fucking Nerevar, and you can’t fill it with me either, whether it’s love  _or_ hate. Kuruh naelin cho-yomar bel-guar, sorakhett!”  
  
The accent needed work, but Julan’s mouth fell open. “Did you just tell me to fuck myself with a guar’s…?”  
  
“Hah!” Iriel beamed, delighted. “I got it right! Go fuck yourself with a guar cock, you pathetic sack of shit, was that it?”  
  
“…More or less. How the…?”  
  
“Thank Xarxes! I wrote it down at the time, but I had no confirmation until now that it meant what Shani claimed it did. Even better, I remembered it correctly, despite losing all my Velothi notes and vocabulary in the shipwreck!”  
  
“Shani?! When did you… how much has she… Ohhh, Malacath. Sheo-fucking-gorath.” Julan’s horrified expression was so entertaining that the mere memory of it kept Iriel cheerful for the rest of the day.  
  



	119. shit

In some ways, it was infuriating to Iriel how their bodies still moved in synch, still knew the steps of the dance. Julan moving to block a warrior’s charge, then drawing him sideways, to give Iriel a clear shot. Ire taking out archers with shock spells, maintaining Shield spells on Julan, paralysing anyone who threatened to get too close.  
  
In other ways, it was a relief, because it meant they didn’t get killed by the Orc bandits who ambushed them from the roof of the abandoned stronghold they passed, hiking east through the Ashlands.

Investigating the ruins, it transpired that the stronghold interior was blocked by fallen rubble, the Orcs merely camping on top. Ire wrinkled his nose at the crude Daedric effigy they’d erected on the plaza. Malacath, he presumed. Had they been bandits or cultists? Perhaps both. Either way, they’d been in rough shape. Ire wasn’t complaining, since it had allowed their survival, but he wondered if it was related to the crates of brandy and skooma stacked in one of their tents.  
  
“Would you stop me?” Ire was sitting by the Orcs’ fire, recovering his energy and considering another attempt at cookery. He was also dangling a bottle of skooma from his fingers. “Would you try and save me from myself? Or is that not as much fun as getting straddled by Daedra? Though I suppose you’re not going to get any better offers in that regard, are you?”  
  
He flicked the stopper out of the skooma and sniffed it. “Auri-El, it’s the good stuff. I wonder if they have a pipe around here.”  
  
He glanced at Julan, who, a short distance away, had found a whetstone and was sharpening his sword. He rolled his eyes, and continued filing a nick out of the glass edge.  
  
“Is that a no? I have your permission to fuck myself up on drugs these days, do I?” Ire snorted. “No wonder. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’d be all needy and tractable again, relying on you to take care of me.” He lobbed the bottle over the plaza wall, producing a satisfying smash.  
  
Ire was in a buoyant mood. The sole surviving room of the stronghold had been the propylon chamber, the door magically warded. Impassable to the Orcs, it had been child’s play to Iriel, who had dismissed the glyph in seconds. Inside, veiled in dust, he’d discovered a set of high-grade alchemy equipment, amid the remains of a small, makeshift laboratory. Not many ingredients were still usable, but he found a few mineral compounds such as ash and fire salts, plus a stack of empty vials. It was all in his pack now, waiting for him to find some fresh components.  
  
Julan, his sword as sharp as he was going to get it, slumped down on the opposite side of the fire. He’d found a new cuirass among the Orcs’ heap of spoils, to replace the bonemould wreck. He seemed impressed with it, but Iriel thought it looked like something a sea monster had vomited. It was reddish-brown, with an iridescent sheen that made it look constantly slimy, and Ire was sure he’d caught glimpses of suckers on its tentacle-like straps. Despite his revulsion, Ire would still have listed it as the highlight of Julan’s physical appearance. The fight had left his face sweat-streaked and his nose bloody. He’d long since given up trying to detangle his hair, which was, like the rest of him, caked in ash.  
  
Ire smirked nastily. “You must be Malacath,” he said, “because you look like  _shit_.”  
  
When Julan failed to appreciate his sophisticated religious joke, Iriel sighed, a hint of contrition in his eyes. “All right, perhaps that was unfair. To Malacath, I mean. Dangerous habit, insulting a Daedric Prince when his statue’s looming over you.” He yawned, folding his arms behind his head. The sun was sinking. Resigned to camping here, he began unwrapping the extra kagouti meat.  
  
“I never got the hang of religion,” he said, poking around the fire for cooking implements. “My pa was very serious about that stuff, always praying to Auri-El and Syrabane before he went to sea, and to Mara before he slept. Ma did all the socially obligated temple things, offerings and suchlike, but I didn’t get the impression she cared much, beyond keeping up appearances. Me, I just never…  _connected_  with any of it. It felt like it was for other people. The entire point, as far as I could tell, was that they’re better than us. Better, because they’re above all this messy shit we’re down here wallowing in.”  
  
He found a length of thin metal in the ash, and peered at it, dubiously. “And they’re allegedly our ancestors, except not MY ancestors, high-blood noble people’s ancestors, and I was told that ought to mean something to me. It was all supposed to be, y'know,  _aspirational_. But you know me, never any good at wanting what I’m told to want.”  
  
Taking up the skewer, he brandished it upwards. “The Aedra were for people who fitted into that whole ancestral ideal, of climbing the ladder, aiming for the sky.” He illustrated the prescribed motion with a sarcastic flick of his wrist. “Working to make our race as close to the divine as possible. As if that would help, as if any of us even knew what that was supposed to look like! I only knew it didn’t look like me, and if the Aedra ever deigned to interfere in petty mortal affairs, it wouldn’t be to give meany of the things I wanted. No matter how much I prayed, or how many tayflowers I arranged prettily on the altars. So what was the point? And the less said about Daedra, the better. I have enough problems, thank you.” He shot the statue a sideways glance, then began brushing the larger bits of dirt and ash off the kagouti chunks.  
  
“You know what  _your_  problem is?” he said, presently. He knew the exact stare Julan would be giving him without looking up, so he didn’t bother, continuing to spear meat onto skewers. “You picked the wrong Daedra. You and that mother of yours should never have bothered with Azura, you should have been worshipping Malacath all along. Prince of outcasts, right? You might have found some pride in your situation, instead of wasting all this time and energy chasing things you’d never achieve. What did Azura ever do for you, anyway? The thing about Daedra is they claim to be beyond Mundus, but they’re not any better for it. They’re just more powerful. They do all the horrible, ugly, petty things mortals do, and then some! They’re like giant toddlers. At least the Aedra represent something worthwhile, even if I can’t relate to it. Azura’s supposed to be one of the better ones, but as far as I can see, all you Dunmer ever got from her was a curse!”  
  
He gestured outwards, to the Ashlands. “Congratulations, she made you the same colour as your grim, blighted country. How’s that working out for you?”  
  
Having arranged the skewers over the fire, he regarded the black marks on his hands. Smudging finger into thumb, his skin smeared grey. “Look,” he said, “it’s happening to me. I should have seen it coming. I’m following the Velothi exodus from Summerset, after all. The next step is for me to rub shit on my face, right? So that Boethiah or whoever can teach me to be different from the Altmer. A Changed One. You all take such perverse pride in it here, but it’s a cautionary tale back home, a horrible warning against straying from the path of the ancestors into Daedra-town.”  
  
He shrugged theatrically, eyes wide. “But Iriel, I hear you cry, why not? Fuck homelands, right? Fuck being Altmer! Why  _not_  change?” He took a fingerful of ash from the edge of the fire, and daubed it onto his cheek. “There! Ash is fire’s waste product, so it’s basically shit, right? Fire-shit. This entire country and everyone in it is covered in shit, so I should be, too. When does the curse kick in? I can’t wait.” He settled himself onto the ground, and grinned smugly at Julan, whose expression was unreadable.  
  
“You see, that’s the trouble with change,” Iriel mused, steepling his fingers as he wound up his lecture. “Whatever your intentions, there’s never any guarantee the consequences will be what you hoped for. No guarantee you’ll end up any better than where you started from. Only different. In your case, in a whole lot more shit. All change is like that, but especially the kind you can’t reverse. Like burning things. You might end up with nothing but a big heap of ash.”  
  
Julan’s face was as close to smiling as Ire had seen it for a long time, and that worried him. “What?” he demanded.  
  
“That goes for cooking, too.”  
  
Ire followed his gaze. “Oh…  _shit_.”


	120. reasons

Perhaps it was his recent encounter with the undead. Or losing the tooth. Or burning dinner. Or the cheerful singing of bloodthirsty folk-songs as he walked, the previous day. But in his dreams, Iriel found himself standing in a midnight meadow, before a blazing bonfire. His dead lover, he knew, stood expectantly on the other side, form concealed by smoke and darkness.

Like the girl in his mother’s song, he was burning things. All kinds of things: twigs, flowers, stones. Fistfuls of hissing herbs. Books, their pages curling and blackening. A soul gem that cracked, with a hollow, gasping sound. He saw himself throw them on the fire, and watch them burn.  
  
No… not himself. The certainties of the dream shifted, and he realised he wasn’t the one burning things at all. He was the dead one, had been all along. Looking down, he saw the torn remnants of fabric, and bone after cracked, brittle bone. Looking up, through dry, empty sockets, he saw Julan on the other side of the fire.  
  
He was dressed in finely embroidered Velothi garments. His hair was long, smooth and beaded, and his eyes were cast downwards. In the dream, Iriel issued a command. Julan nodded. He raised his dagger. Gathering his hair into his fist, he sliced it cleanly through, and tossed it onto the fire. He never looked up.  
  
Even in the dream, Ire knew what was coming, though he was powerless to stop it, and in the dream, he had no desire to. As Julan’s hair burned, the smoke rose and floated towards him, entering his cold bones with a thrill of heat. When Julan cut his fine clothing off, part by beaded part, and fed it to the flames, Iriel felt something shift, and looking down, found he was wearing it. When Julan slashed his veins and dripped blood, steaming and spluttering into the blaze, Ire felt warm flesh creep over his ribs like moss.  
  
Finally, when all that would burn had been sacrificed, and everything given, received, it was over. Iriel looked through the flames with living eyes, and saw a husk-like corpse falling into the fire, decomposing and crumbling to ashes. He was already turning away. He drew a deep, full breath into his lungs, smoothed his hair back from his face and strode towards the rising sun, alive and whole.  
  
“No!” He sat up in darkness, nauseous and shaking. Still the Orcs’ campsite atop the Dunmer stronghold, dawn not yet close. The fire cold, and for once, he was grateful. “No!!” he said again, louder, fury and panic mounting.  
  
Julan was a distant, silent shape beneath a blanket. Ire, aware of how lightly he slept, knew full well he’d already be awake. Not that he cared about disturbing him. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Fuck you all the way to Akavir, you–” He got no further before sobs overtook him, and he collapsed onto the grimy bedroll.   
  
Curled into himself, he wailed and fought for each desperate breath until his throat was raw. Once, he saw red eyes blink at him, through the gloom. He choked out another curse, rolled over, and when he looked back, they were gone. In time, exhaustion sent him under again.  
  
  
The next day dawned in formality only, the sky a numb slate grey. Iriel was relieved. Sunshine would only have made it worse. As it was, he could barely keep putting one foot in front of the other. All the vitriolic energy that had powered him through the last few days had drained away, and he had nothing left. Nothing but the knowledge of his task, and the insistent voice in his head.  
  
_Thesis proposal: a comprehensive investigation into the methods used by Iriel formerly of Lillandril to systematically destroy every good thing he ever had in his life. Based on a thorough examination of available evidence, including primary and secondary sources, examples and case studies, documenting and evaluating the ways in which Iriel, in attempting to avoid repeating previous mistakes, only succeeded in triggering new ones, resulting in an endless, uncontrollable chain reaction of explosively calamitous fuckuppery. Comparisons to falling dominoes and forest fires will be utilised to support a logically compelling argument that this process, being self-sustaining once initiated, may be expected to continue inexorably until all possibilities for happiness have been exhausted, leading to the damning but ultimately uncontroversial conclusion that Iriel–_  
  
Some days, he had the strength to ignore it, reason with it, swear at it. Today was not such a day. All he could do was face west and trudge on, through the endless ash. Julan was behind him somewhere, the amount of brandy he’d methodically consumed the previous night causing him to wince with every step. Ire didn’t turn, and neither of them spoke.  
  
After a while, he couldn’t even be bothered with the academic jargon.  
  
_you couldn’t keep your big mouth shut with hiranel_  
_so you made reu think you were ashamed of him_  
_you led kaye on, then ran screaming when he got serious_  
_so you convinced julan you didn’t give a fuck about him_  
  
He prayed they were close to Urshilaku Camp. If something happened now to block him from his tenuous goal, he was going to have real trouble finding reasons not to walk straight into the ocean. He’d long since cursed his reckless destruction of the skooma.  
__  
_you refuse to believe decent people could care_  
_therefore caring is proof of idiocy or malice_  
_so you treat them like dirt till they get sick of you_  
_because the top priority is that you be proved right!_  
  
Later, his thoughts began falling into bleak little poems. He called them poems, although they didn’t rhyme, scan, or contain any lyrical beauty.  
  
_sky is grey_  
_so is ash_  
_iriel of nowhere_  
_is a piece of shit_  
  
(He briefly considered “complete trash” for the last line, but since producing something plausibly poetic would be defeating the object, he rejected it.)  
  
For the next few days, they trailed gradually west, sleeping and eating where they could. Exchanging few words, each locked in his own thoughts. On the third day, barely looking where he was going, a short dropoff on the other side of an ash-dune caused Iriel a stumble that turned into a skid. Shifting ash escalated his decline, but cushioned his landing. Then his bag, weighted with looted alchemy equipment, used him to cushion its landing. He rubbed his shoulder, though the pain registered only dimly. He sat in the ash, standing up suddenly equivalent to climbing a greased pole.  
  
As he sought the willpower to begin, something touched his knee with a soft hiss. A scrib, small, white and near-blind, robotically navigating the area on its six slender legs. As he watched, it thumped the rearmost section of its segmented body into the ash, and paused, legs tensed, trying to sense vibration. Sinking into the soft terrain, he suspected it wasn’t getting very far. He saw its eggmine, a few yards distant, so he picked it up gently and pointed it in the right direction. It tottered away.  
  
“We’re almost there.” The rasping comment from the crest of the dune behind him startled Ire far more than the scrib had. He followed Julan’s raised finger, and saw smoke over the next ridge. “What d'you think you going to do?” his superfluous shadow demanded. “They won’t listen to you, either, you know.”  
  
“It’s none of your business.”  
  
“I may be an outcast, but you’re an outlander. You could never be Nerevarine. They’ll kill you for the insult, if they can stop laughing long enough. Why are you still–”  
  
“LEAVE ME ALONE! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU–”  
  
“Jah haishan!! Sorussi eh punussi!” The air filled with shouts, an avalanche of footfalls, and a spear, flying over Iriel’s head and plunging into the ash at Julan’s feet. He stumbled backwards, yanking his glass longsword from its makeshift sheath as half a dozen Ashlander warriors charged over the ridge towards them.  
  
Leading the attack was a sharp-faced middle-aged man, tall and slender, but hefting a chitin war-axe with obvious strength. He had something of the cliff racer about him, with his feathered pauldrons, and hooked beak of a nose. His grey-streaked brown hair, braided back from his face, was strung with beads and yet more feathers, some dyed a shimmering green to match the bugshell on his shield.  
  
Iriel cowered, but the warriors leapt past him, aiming their weapons squarely at Julan. Knuckles white, he gripped his sword, eyes darting to Iriel, who was still being completely ignored.  
  
“Balussi dan!” barked a warrior, jabbing his spearpoint towards Julan’s blade.   
  
Julan’s grip tightened still further, body tense and unmoving aside from his jaw, which he ground slowly back and forth. Then, he let the sword fall to the ash, and spread his hands. “Sorath! Hasorath, I yield!” The other Ashlanders recognised his surrender, but continued to drive him, skidding and panting, back over the dune they’d just crossed.  
  
As his men harassed Julan out of sight, shaking their weapons and bellowing, their leader approached Iriel, who was still spreadeagled on the ground. “I apologise on behalf of Urshilaku, outlander. I was unaware of this new outcast in our lands. Are you harmed?” Ire shook his head numbly. “Good. Then I wish you farewell, and safe journey out of our territory. Under sun and sky, outlander.” He nodded politely, and signalled to his men.  
  
“Wait!” Iriel cleared his throat, the warrior’s last words rattling loose the original Velothi phrase in his brain. “Pal.. pal-khora pal-lassu! Vuh maeli pal-khora pal-lassu. Except don’t! Vuh, I mean. Don’t go. I… I came here to find the Urshilaku.”   
  
As the man stared at him in surprise, he struggled to his feet, brain rapidly hurling together half-remembered personal introductions. “Ha'eth Iriel, maran va–ahem. Um…” _congratulations Iriel thanks to Shani you can accidentally out yourself in two languages. Now get a grip, please._  
  
Without his notes, he could only recall ridiculously childish fragments of Velothi, but he said them anyway: “Salka. Zaveth?”  _thank you, how are you?_  
  
The Ashlander blinked. “Saveth maeli,” he said, one eyebrow lifted askew. “Ha'eth Zabamund, gulakhan dar-Urshilaku.”  
  
Iriel nodded frantically. “I understood that! But I probably won’t understand anything you say next. I’m afraid that’s about the limit of my Velothi, aside from a number of insulting phrases involving guar. But I need to speak to the Urshilaku elders. Please… oh, I know that one! Halla. Halla, may I please return with you to your camp?”  
  
Zabamund’s eyebrow was still elevated suspiciously. “Are you missionary?”  
  
Ire waved his hands. “No! Ganna! Gan missionary, ha'eth.. um…” He hadn’t found the Velothi word for scholar, so he had, with the aid of his limited phrasebook, constructed something he hoped conveyed the right sense. “Zebbesha yul-ahlku.”  
  
“…Hunter of truth?” Zabamund looked completely nonplussed.  "You are unarmed?“ Iriel nodded, trying not to let his shoulders sag, as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him again.  
  
After a long moment, Zabamund shrugged. "Unna. Come to our camp with me, then. Kahussi, if you would learn our words. Kahussi pinha ahattur bel-Urshilaku. You may not stay long, but you may trade for supplies, if you wish. Then I send warriors to escort you away safe. I rather not leave you here where this haishan lurks about still.”  
  
“Salka.” Iriel hoisted his bag.  
  
The other warriors had returned, one of them snatching up Julan’s glass sword from the ground. Bright eyed with pride, he presented it to Zabamund, who accepted it seriously, inclining his head in acknowledgement. Iriel bit his lip.  
  
As he followed Zabamund and his men across the ash-dunes, he couldn’t help asking: “Did you kill him? The… haishan?”  
  
Zabamund tossed his braids scornfully. “It is not honourable to break law of surrender, even with outcast. We have his blade so he makes less trouble. Is too good for him anyway, likely stolen. It is better as gift to our ancestors.”  
  
“You chased him off, but not me. Is it better to be an outlander than an outcast, then?”  
  
The Urshilaku man chuckled. “It is not good to be outlander, but you cannot prevent being outlander, it is simply fact.” He lowered his brows, meaningfully. “Outcasts are outcasts for  _reasons_.”  


	121. tradition

Crkkk-SQUISH.  
“Sorry.”  
hsssss!  
Crkk-krrk-SQUISSSH.  
“Sorry.”  
  
As he stamped the third scrib to death, Iriel began to wonder if he was doing something wrong. Surely apologising in the local vernacular would be more appropriate, even if they didn’t understand. He trotted over to Urshilaku camp and located an obliging grandmother, scraping out a bugshell with the help of an enthusiastic toddler.

Crrkkk-SQUISH.  
“Hashenim.”  
Crrk-SKRRRSHH.  
“Shenim. I’m really very marali shenim. It’s for the greater good. Whenever people tell you that, you know they mean ‘people greater than you’. I hate to pull rank with the whole 'bigger and stronger’ thing,” –crrrrrk– “but I so rarely get to do that, and I’m afraid I need your jelly.”  
SQUISHH.  
“Sorry. Shenim.”

The Charm spell he’d cast on himself lasted as long as it took to squeeze the jelly from their smashed carapaces into a flask. Afterwards, he lay down in the unresisting ash, until the urge to dig a hole and bury himself in it returned to a manageable (though still significant) level. Then, he took out the ash salts he’d found at the stronghold, set up his alembic, and began the first stage of the procedure.  
  
Two hours later, Zabamund came over to where he was sitting cross-legged next to his equipment, a short distance outside the camp boundary. “You are here still,” he observed.  
  
Ire nodded, apologetically. “Hashenim. If anything I’m doing is remotely threatening or offensive, please tell me. I’ll leave immediately, if I’m causing you any worry.”  
  
The gulakhan looked slightly affronted. “I am not worried by you.”  
  
“Oh, good. I’m so glad. Um… how do you say, 'would you like a free blight cure potion’ in Velothi? Halla.”  
  
“Blight cure?” He stared at Iriel’s small army of vials. “Are you  _sure_  you are not missionary?”  
  
“Ha'eth zebbesha yul-ahlku, remember? And also an alchemist, but I don’t know the Velothi for that.”  
  
“I do not understand why you do this.”  
  
“When I was a guest with the Ahemmusa, blight was a dreadful problem, and your trader agreed with me that these would be valuable.”  
  
“So why do you not trade them to her?”  
  
“I want to offer gifts… beshour. As a sign of thanks and respect. I had the right traditional offering phrases in my notes, but I can’t remember all the words. Saterith… something… beshour?”  
  
Zabamund’s lips twitched so briefly that Iriel wasn’t sure if it was a disapproving grimace, or an impressed smirk. “You think to place us in your debt, invoke guest-obligation.”  
  
“I only want to repay you! You saved my life from that haishan, after all.”  
  
“Listen, even if you do this thing, you will not speak to our wise woman. This is not permitted for you, even after guest-rites.”  
  
“I quite understand. Does that also apply to the ashkhan?”  
  
Zabamund was silent for a moment, then shrugged, feathered shoulders quivering. “Ha'eth gulakhan. I can permit this. Perhaps. If you are guest. But you are not.”  
  
“Of course. I mean no disrespect. Shenim. Now, how do I say 'free blight cure potions’?”  
  
Zabamund sighed, and stroked the bridge of his long nose. “First, you stop apologising like women. Shenith, you can say, if you must. 'Ith’ is for men’s words, 'im’ is women’s.” He stared at the potions again. “I will come back after I will think on this,” he said, and stalked away, vanishing between the yurts.  
  
  
Iriel rolled his eyes at Zabamund’s retreating back. He found the overly gendered aspects of Velothi language ridiculous, although he wasn’t sure exactly why he resented it so much. “It’s just so unnecessary,” he’d protested to Julan, on a rare occasion they’d attempted a lesson, one bored Balmora afternoon. “Why are you all so obsessed with emphasising your masculinity in everything you say or do?”  
  
Julan had been confused. “It’s not about that,” he’d said. “At least… I don’t think so. It’s just how you say those words. Other words are the same for everyone, in places where Tamrielic makes a difference, like she and he. Velothi uses 'da’ or 'dael’ for both.”  
  
“You mean pronouns aren’t gendered?”  
  
“You tell me, you’re the one who knows all these words for words.”  
  
“I mean… if I wanted to mention my lover to someone, I could do it without ever revealing if they were male or female, and it wouldn’t sound awkward?”  
  
“Uh… I guess, if you were careful. Most words for people are the same for both. Lover’d be 'rilesha’ either way. So… uh… what would you say about this lover of yours, anyway?”  
  
“I’m afraid it’s untranslatable. Too filthy.”  
  
“Velothi can get pretty filthy, you know.”  
  
“Yes, I hear you’re famous for your oral tradition. Care to give me a thorough education?”  
  
“Iya, that joke wasn’t funny the first five times you said it… but…”  
  
The lesson had derailed swiftly after that, and Iriel abandoned the train of thought before it followed suit and plummeted into a ravine. He attempted, instead, to mentally reconstruct the phrasebook he’d obtained and studied, during his recent weeks in hiding. It was aimed at Imperial Cult missionaries, containing various commentaries on Ashlander linguistics and culture.  
  
_Ashlanders are unnaturally obsessed with the past and future, and have an unnecessarily large number of ways to refer to them. Aside from all the standard tenses and moods found in Cyrodiilic, the Velothi dialect contains two additional and unique verb forms: the future prophetic and the past ancestral._  
  
_The prophetic, or predictive, is a future tense used in formal prophetic speech. Most commonly used by wise women, it can also be found in certain traditional set phrases, where the speaker wishes to convey their deepest convictions, or wishes to pretend, for the sake of politeness, that they know this future to be true. For example, the set phrase offering sympathy to the grieving:_  
  
_Davethar shulli ahurshi - He shall go peacefully to join the ancestors._  
  
_Conversely, the past ancestral is used almost exclusively to narrate histories and myths, often translated with phrases such as “It is said that he..” where the facts are not verifiable. Ancestors, it is also claimed, refer to all Mundean events in the past ancestral, thus the name._  
  
_Ashlanders, of course, will tell you that verifiability is no measure of truth, and have been known to take great offence at the interpretations of Cyrodiilic linguists concerning both the ancestral and prophetic tenses, and to expel them from their camps. Anyone undertaking further research in this field is advised to be extremely cautious, especially around wise women._

Iriel liked languages. More precisely, however, he liked his languages like he liked his erotica: unsullied by awkward attempts at real-world implementation. Dwemeris was ideal, for the simple reason that all its native speakers were missing, presumed dead. The chances of him ever having to attempt stilted conversation in the full knowledge he sounded idiotic were, he believed, zero.   
  
Modern foreign languages had not, in any case, been on the curriculum, in Summerset. Tamrielic, the official language of the Empire, had had the exceptional good taste to base itself on Altmeris to begin with, and, barring regional variations, the two were mutually intelligible. Beyond that… the very idea that an Altmer might ever need to communicate with a lesser race on its own terms! Unconscionable.  
  
According to Caius Cosades, the Velothi tongue was technically a dialect of Dunmeris, but the word structure and pronunciation were so different that Iriel suspected the languages must have forked thousands of years ago. To city Dunmer, Velothi words existed primarily as the names of ancient shrines and caverns, and they found actual Ashlanders almost impossible to understand.  
  
"They just think we’re stupid and can’t talk right,” Julan had sneered, “but our language is older and purer than theirs. We still speak the words of Veloth himself, uncorrupted by outside influence.” He often became melancholic when Iriel asked him to explain Velothi words or grammar, his descent into a bad mood being the other, less enjoyable, reason Iriel’s comprehension had never developed very far. Eventually, Iriel had got the truth out of him: despite his accent, it wasn’t his first language. He’d picked it up from Shani and the other Ahemmusa as a child, but his mother had apparently raised him in a motley blend of Tamrielic and standard Dunmeris.  
  
“Took me years to separate it all out, and learn to only use one at a time,” he’d admitted, stabbing Ire’s pencil rhythmically into his notepaper, “but it gave me a head start understanding all the books I wanted to read.” He smirked a little. “So I guess  _that_  plan backfired on her.”  
  
Iriel had been nonplussed. “What plan? I thought you were supposed to be your people’s saviour, preserver of Ashlander culture! Isn’t language rather important for that?”  
  
“Yeah, well. If you ask me, Mother doesn’t care that much about Ashlander culture, y'know, personally. She only cares about the prophecies, not the rest. Take my name! It’s hardly a traditional Velothi name, Sheogorath alone knows why she– …but it doesn’t matter. She has her reasons. And… when I was a kid… she was more worried about protecting me from the people who were closest by.”  
  
“Protecting you?!”  
  
“It’s how she sees things. It’s not… look, I… I don’t expect you to understand.” The pencil lead had broken with a sudden snap, and before Ire could even protest at the reckless disregard for stationery, Julan had flung it at the wall, and walked out.   
  
  
Zabamund returned at dusk, the muted chatter and clatter of evening meal preparation audible behind him, pale bug-lanterns strung out from the central campfire like swollen-bellied fireflies. He looked perturbed. “Here, still? Will you sleep out here, alone in the dark with no blanket, nothing?”  
  
Iriel offered him a benign smile. “I worried a fire might draw creatures to your camp, so I thought it best to avoid one. I still have some bits of dried kagouti, and I’ve been sleeping rough since the shipwreck. I’m quite used to it, I assure you. My scarf keeps me warm!” He indicated his blue silk scarf, shrivelled by salt-water and rescued from a rock-pool, but still retaining most of its sequins. He twined his fingers into its comforting texture; it helped stop them shaking. “I get very nervous around people. Being alone out here is honestly fine. I’ve given away all my potions, so I’ll start walking as soon as it’s light. Unless you’d prefer I left now? I don’t want to be any trouble. Shenim. Sorry. Shenith.”  
  
“You are most…” The Ashlander stared at Iriel in apparent frustration. Iriel blinked back at him, innocent as mist.  
  
Then Ire clapped a hand lightly to his cheek. “Azura’s star, I almost forgot about the one I saved for you. How terribly disrespectful to leave it until last, considering you rescued me yourself. So shenith.” He pulled out a final stoppered glass vial, and extended it with both hands, making solemn eye contact. “Sateroith assu beshour nuhl, halla.”  _May this gift be acceptable to you, I pray._  
  
“Nadinath hael,” Zabamund responded, fingers closing automatically around it;  _you honour me_.  
  
Iriel bowed his head. “Ganna, ha'assessu beshenu,” he said, as humbly as he could.  _Not at all, I am blessed to be in a position to offer it._  
  
Zabamund exhaled noisily, his feathers drooping. “Sorath! You have shamed us enough. You will leave in the morning, but tonight, we give you guest-rites, and you eat and sleep with us. Yul-Boethiah…”  
  
He waited, hand on hip, muttering to himself in Velothi as Iriel scooped up his things. “I tell you this also, do not swear by Azura’s star. Vasa bel-Azura is old woman’s oath, it makes you sound like my wife’s mother. Men swear by Boethiah, or Malacath.”  
  
_How about Mephala?_  thought Iriel as, escorted towards the heart of Urshilaku camp, he braced himself for the next, far more difficult, phase of his plan.


	122. clan

The contrast was interesting. The Urshilaku wore far richer clothes, bore far finer weapons and generally seemed in far better physical and economic condition than the Ahemmusa, but they smiled less. They treated each other with more formality and seriousness, serving the dishes of curried scuttle and fragrant, herb-infused saltrice in strict order of precedence, with carefully phrased words of offering and receipt.  
  
Iriel wondered if the tribal culture was inspired by their ashkhan. Like his gulakhan, he was tall, but where Zabamund was brown and wiry like a trama thorn, Sul-Matuul was broad-chested, and dark of hair and eye. Zabamund moved sharply and economically, whether surreptitiously excavating his nose with a long finger, or pointing out a clansman who had not yet received a meal. Sul-Matuul simply didn’t move. He sat like a lump of uncarved stone, rugged and seemingly ageless, only his eyes flicking from face to firelit face. From Zabamund to Iriel and back, Zabamund noticing, and returning his khan a look that mixed contrition and obstinacy.  _I know_ , his expression said,  _but trust me_. Ire felt the cool tautness of the drying guest-rite mark on his forehead, and chewed his lip.

Sul-Matuul was glaring at him again. He wore a wide leather band high across his forehead, inlaid with stones and bugshell, and his cheeks were marked with lines of small, regular, v-shaped scars, surrounded by more angular patterns, inked black into grey skin.  
  
Ire didn’t know the implications of eye contact in Ashlander society, but he gazed back as steadily as he could, before breaking off and returning his attention to his plate. He was determined to finish the meal without flinching, despite the salt and spice being considerably beyond his comfort level. He took another gulp of smoky trama-root tea, and tried to focus his mind past the burning sensation on his tongue. He only succeeded in wondering if this was how fellating a flame atronach actually felt.  
  
There were many reasons why Iriel was not naturally given to the creation and implementation of cunning plans, especially ones requiring constant adaptation and improvisation on the fly. You are no doubt familiar with many of these reasons already, but one I would highlight here is this: Ire had spent most of his life encased within strict systems. Altmeri society was one huge, rigid structure, an immense machine comprising bloodline, caste, education and vocation, thrusting an individual along its narrow pathways from birth to death with very little room to manoeuvre. According to his starting position, Iriel should, at this very moment, have been a fisherman, like his pa, however unsuited he might be for such a life. His blood dictated his destiny. But blood hadn’t reckoned with Iriel’s ma.  
  
Systems, she taught him, are constructed of rules. That’s how they operate, how they propel you, like a marble, down your allocated channel and into your designated hole. Generally, the rules exist to keep you in your place, but if you are clever, she said, you can use them to your advantage. You can take a rule from one part of the system, bend it carefully, and use it as a tool to jam into the mechanism of another part, force open a door you were never intended to access. And if you can do that, she said, emerald eyes glinting, the system will quietly let you, because the alternative is to admit itself broken, and the system is more important than you. The system will still try to break  _you_ , if it can reach you, so they key is to protect yourself with the system itself. And, eventually, sabotage it from the inside.  
  
Iriel hadn’t understood a word. He only knew that his mother’s social machinations were yet another system he was trapped in. He was merely shunted from one into another, equally impenetrable and impossible for him to affect, equally disinterested in his happiness. He couldn’t think the way she did. Deliberate manipulation of his situation had never seemed possible, only obedient inertia, or sudden, violent release, trapdoors opening and plunging him into the helpless liberation of freefall. He’d been freefalling since his arrival in Morrowind, and sometimes thought he’d never stop. For all the resentment of control and authority his life had built up inside him, and all his instinctive refusal to return to any form of imprisonment, he had no idea how to exist without it.  _Slaves aren’t equipped to handle freedom.  
  
_ True, Iriel had no idea how to control a situation in order to produce a desired outcome, at least, not outside an alchemy lab, and certainly not one involving  _people_. However. There were advantages to having the sort of brain that continually played out, in imaginative detail and living colour, the worst possible outcome of any upcoming event.  
  
He had set out from Sadrith Mora with stubborn fatalism in mind. He’d go to the camp, ask to be tested, and they’d tell him to fuck off, hopefully non-lethally. Then all this would be finished, and everyone would leave him alone. Except, slogging across the dead hills of the Ashlands, doubts had elbowed their way to the front of his mind. What if, on reporting back to Cosades that the Urshilaku refused to test him, he was redeployed with a Legion escort, to force them to co-operate? That possibility was too dreadful to contemplate.  
  
He had considered flat out lying to Cosades - that he’d failed the test, been tested, even been to Urshilaku camp at all. How would the Spymaster know? Reviewing his skill at subterfuge in the face of a professional, Iriel had known the answer to that. In any case, Julan would know, and while he was unlikely to inform Cosades, observable proof that Ire had been formally rejected as a child of prophecy might be the only way he could be dislodged.  _We both know it’s not really about that, but at least he’d lose the excuse._  
  
 _Ashlander courtesy and tradition is a system,_  he told himself.  _Your only hope is to understand it, and learn how to operate within it. Guest-obligation means they can’t attack you without provocation, or refuse a reasonable request without losing face. But claiming to be Nerevarine would surely count as provocation, and a request to be tested surely not considered reasonable. Perhaps I can explain things to the wise woman, but first I need an audience, and they keep her shut up in her yurt like a secret._  
  
His presence, being unavoidably intriguing to many, had made the meal a stressful, conspicuous process, but he’d predicted that, prepared, and made it through without incident. Now, their curiosity sated that the outlander, while tall and oddly coloured, was really very boring, most of the tribe had returned to their business. They left the firelight in ones and twos, bowing to their khan as they did so, yet another formulaic phrase on their lips.  
  
Only a handful remained now, the slowest eaters. White-haired elders, swathed in tasselled blankets, sucking saltrice off wooden spoons, grain by grain. An unkempt woman, tangles of hair escaping her black braids, the same pattern of raised dots on her brow as Zabamund. She nursed a baby with one arm, shovelling down cold food with the other, finally finding the time, after spending the meal corralling her other children.  
  
Addressing the dour, brooding Urshilaku ashkhan felt about as wise as jabbing a sleeping ogrim with a wet mop, but Iriel knew he had to take the opportunity while he had it, he couldn’t lose his nerve. He clenched his hands in his lap, tried to steady himself. Cleared his throat. Perhaps, though, his long silence had done some of the work for him, excited some glimmer of curiosity, because in the end Sul-Matuul spoke to him, first.  
  
“Zabamund tells me you were among the Ahemmusa.”  
  
The gulakhan looked up sharply at mention of his name, and his eyes sought Iriel, urging caution.  
  
Ire received the warning, but, with no way of knowing where the traps were hidden, could only stumble blindly forwards. “Yes,” he said, as neutrally as he could. “I was injured, and they cared for me until I recovered.”  
  
“You have some loyalty to them, then?” Sul-Matuul had spring-loaded blades in his question, but Iriel couldn’t see their direction.  
  
“They showed me great hospitality, although they had little to spare,” he replied, placing his words carefully, studying the ashkhan’s eyes for reaction.  
  
“They are in a bad condition, then?” The merest hint of a smile. “How does their khan compare to me, outlander?”  
  
“Since their khan…” Iriel felt the conversation give beneath his feet, and stumbled back, hesitating, trying to map out the consequences of possible answers before he triggered something devastating.  
  
Sul-Matuul interrupted his whirring mind with a cavernous laugh, leaning forwards, looking into his frightened eyes. “Loyalty, indeed, if you fear to reveal the extent of their weakness. And well you should, for we suffered great insult from the Ahemmusa, and have despised them since. I tell you, they had no thought for hospitality then, or care for the sanctity of guest-rites. My kin did not hold the khan-claim in those days, and the Ahemmusa should be grateful that we did not. My bloodline is like ebony, the black veins of this land, we become harder and stronger, generation upon generation. We spoke in favour of war that day. But fear not, Altmer. I have already heard that the ashkhan who abused our welcome is dead, and the Ahemmusa have no other, no strength to them, no warrior worth the name.”  
  
He snorted, returning to his original position, solid and upright in the dim light. “But we still value the Law of the Wastes. We protect the lives of the innocent, and we do not attack lightly. You may tell the Ahemmusa this. That we do not forgive, or forget, but we have more honour than to attack a khanless tribe of herders over a decades-old grievance. You will find, outlander, that we have higher standards than the other clans. We maintain older traditions. We also watch our guests closely. I am told you wish to see our wise woman, something forbidden to all but the clan-bonded. Why?”  
  
“Khan-huhl, I beg your forgiveness.” Zabamund interjected, a hand extended in swift supplication. “This is my mistake, my confusion. The outlander sought our trader, for supplies, and my ears misheard his foreign tongue. He gave no such insult, truly. He will leave at dawn, and I will personally see him out of our lands.”  
  
Iriel clenched his jaw, and darted Zabamund an apologetic glance. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid… it’s true. I must speak with your wise woman, about a matter of great importance to your people.”  
  
He had hoped to use the approval of the Ahemmusa as a way of inspiring faith in his integrity, but that clearly wasn’t going to work, and he dropped the idea of pretending he’d been sent by their wise woman. He didn’t want to put them at further risk of attack with lies that might backfire, later. This way, everything he had said so far was the truth. For the more deceptive part of his plan, he was forced to fall back on a more unreliable point of contact, albeit one he had fewer qualms about exploiting.  
  
“I have a message from Mashti Kaushibael.”  
  
It caused more of a stir than he’d expected, though whether that was to his advantage he couldn’t tell. Sul-Matuul remained impassive, but Zabamund stiffened, brow creasing. Above all, the wild-haired mother, listening intently since the Ahemmusa had first been mentioned, jerked upright, eyes round, mouth full of rice. “Maffki? Maffki Kauffibael?!” Her baby began howling in outrage, breast dragged suddenly from its reach.   
  
Several passing Urshilaku heard the commotion, and hurried over, including a white-haired woman. She was clearly an elder, but tall and straight-backed in her fine embroidered skirts. She knelt and took possession of the squalling baby, directing a stern look at its mother. “Cover yourself, Maeli,” she snapped, “there’s guests present!”  
  
“But Ammu!”  
“Don’t you ‘Ammu’ me. Is it too much to hope for a single daughter who doesn’t shame me?”  
“Ammu!!! Listen!”  
“Talking back to your mother, now? Before khan and guests?”  
  
What struck Iriel was that they argued in Tamrielic, and he doubted it was for his benefit. The grandmother’s accent, in particular, was unusual, closer to the voices he’d heard in Ald'ruhn than in any Ashlander camp. She turned her glare on Zabamund now, jerking her head towards Maeli, as if holding him personally responsible. Zabamund returned her the incredulous shrug of a man asked to leash a hurricane.  
  
Maeli rearranged her shirt, glaring daggers at her mother as she jabbed a finger towards Iriel. “Ammu, he’s seen Mashti! Has a message from her, he says!”   
  
“Azura’s star!” With her grandchild in her lap, quieted now, the tall woman began scrutinising Iriel intently. It felt like having the paint stripped off him by two, concentrated red flames. “Come on then,” she said, in a commanding tone. “If you have information about my family, speak it.”  
  
“No.” Before Iriel could say anything, Sul-Matuul intervened. He touched his fingers to his chest, eyes displaying genuine sorrow and respect towards the older woman, but then lowered his brows. “Hashenith, Talammu, but no. That name means nothing to the Urshilaku, and any words she might have for us are ghostless dust. She is outcast. You know this to be true.”  
  
After a few moments of heavy silence, Maeli burst out: “With respect, khan-huhl, that’s a decision for the wise woman!”  
  
Sul-Matuul glared, but replied evenly: “No part of this matter enters the domain of the wise woman.”  
  
“But it does,” Iriel raised his voice. “With, um, great respect, it does. She had a dream-vision that–”  
  
The ashkhan thundered across him. “Her visions are of no concern to us! She is  _outcast_ , the bone rites were undone, her clan-ties cut. She is Ahemmusa now, and tied to their ghosts, receiving no wisdom from ours!”   
  
Ire chose his words like hand-holds on a greased cliff. “She’s no longer with the Ahemmusa. She’s a mabrigash now, not part of any clan.”  
  
Many voices, swarming around the fire, joining in to question, argue or confirm.   
  
“A mabrigash? But how, I thought she was–”  
“Why would she send an outlander to tell us this?”  
“You remember Mashti, don’t you? She and Maeli were such opposites. She used to hide in her yurt all day, of course she was too afraid to cross the mountains!”  
“She is a far-seer now? I never recall her showing signs of such, but it comes late to some, by Azura.”  
  
The ashkhan silenced his tribe with a smack of both hands onto his granite-like thighs. “If she has no ancestors, she can have no true visions! Enough of this nonsense! Zabamund, you have granted guest-right to this n'wah. House him with you, then, and have him gone by morning. I will see no more of this trouble in my camp.”  
  
Iriel had one, final card. He only hoped he remembered its details correctly. For once, he was grateful for the many times Caius had made him re-confirm the information in his reports.  
  
“The last thing I want to be is trouble,” he said, “I freely admit that as an outlander, I cannot hope to understand these things. I’m really only the messenger. It’s true, she has no access to the tribe’s ancestral wisdom. But she claimed she had still received a message, from someone she called… Zaeshivasa?”  
  
There was suddenly complete silence around the fire. “I’m sorry,” Ire faltered. “Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps it means as little to you as it does to me. Certainly, the message itself is… strange. I swore on my ancestors and my honour that I would only confide it to the wise woman, however, so if there can be no possibility of an audience with her, I will be on my way at dawn, as the ashkhan commands.”  
  
A second later, everything was a chaos of voices, shouting and arguing in multiple languages at once. Ire was lost in the storm, but “Zaeshivasa!” was repeated on many tongues, and “Peakstar!”  
  
He heard the woman Sul-Matuul had addressed as Talammu insisting loudly, clutching the (again, screaming) baby to her chest: “Admit the truth now, all of you, she is dead! We never had her bones for the rites, we could never be sure she was with the ancestors! Nibani never heard her, but not because she lives, because she’s lost! Admit it, her spirit could be out there, trapped on the mountain that killed her, barred from the kaushagursha, from the Waiting Door, and calling to Mashti instead. Tell me I’m wrong, khan-huhl! And tell me you, of all people, would close your ears to her last message!”  
  
Sul-Matuul had returned to his rock formation, silent and still. His eyes, though, had changed. They stared into the fire, blank with memory and bright with pain.   
  
After a time, when the tumult had calmed enough for him to be heard, Iriel addressed the ashkhan again. “I’m not asking you to contravene the clan-laws on my behalf,” he said. “I quite understand that only the clan-bonded may speak to the wise woman. But perhaps there is a way that I could be clan-bonded? Purely as a formality, I assure you. I’ll still be leaving as soon as I can.”  
  
Maeli spoke now, quickly and emphatically. “Khan-huhl, you can’t say we’ve never clan-bonded outsiders before. My mother sits right here!”  
  
“Ayar, nassaterabanit Nerevar,” croaked one of the blanket-swathed ancients, producing sage nods from many around him. Iriel only grasped the last word, but understood the sense from his research. Ashlanders considered it a point of great pride that they had adopted Nerevar as one of their own.  
  
Another tribeswoman spoke next, her voice scraped and raw with emotion: “Khan-hassuhl, he may be an outlander, but do not scorn him, I beg. He has given us a life with every one of his blight cures. Had he been here three moons ago, my Dirat might have lived.”  
  
It was several minutes before Sul-Matuul spoke. The Urshilaku lapsed gradually into a sympathetic silence, likewise watching the fire, awaiting the judgement of their khan. Finally, he raised his head and straightened his shoulders. Iriel almost expected small avalanches to fall from his neck as he lifted it. “Honoured Talammu, widow of a great Khan-Who-Waits, you and Maeli, mother, warrior and champion of the Urshilaku, speak truly,” he said. “This is not a decision for the khan’s domain. But nor is this a decision for the wise woman’s domain. This is a decision that enters the realm of ash, not blood.”  
  
He turned to address Iriel. “To be adopted into the tribe, you must undergo a harrowing. I declare a sinnasha bel-kaushi, a ghost-trial. You will be judged by the spirits of our ancestors, to see if you are worthy.”  
  
Iriel was shaken by his words, but even more by the looks he saw passing between the Ashlanders around him. By the wince he caught on Zabamund’s face, by the way Maeli dropped her dark head in despair.  _They don’t think I’ll survive,_  he realised,  _not a single one of them._  
  



	123. married

As Zabamund’s guest, he was Zabamund’s responsibility, which was how Iriel found himself in Zabamund’s yurt, on a bedroll squashed in between a pile of assorted armour and a guarskin screen.  
  
“You are welcome to sleep in other yurt with my boys,” the gulakhan had offered, “but they can be…” He’d sucked in his cheeks, searching for the right word. “…vigorous. They are eleven years and six. Baby will be with us, but she is very quiet, Arrihi, truly, as baby. Your choice.”   
  
Iriel, mentally retranslating ‘vigorous’ into more accurate terms, had opted to risk the baby. 

Zabamund had been quite correct: the baby was no trouble, swaddled snug as the bug her carapace-cradle had once belonged to. It was the yurt’s other occupant who threatened Iriel’s peace.  
  
It was a large yurt, but made less so by the sheer volume of stuff crammed into it. Clothes spilled haphazardly out of baskets, and a dizzying array of swords, axes and shields were resting against every available surface.  
  
“Most of these belong to my wife,” Zabamund had told him, in a pointed tone, as he went out to remonstrate with his sons, who were shrieking at each other again, “but the sharpest are mine.”  
  
He looked rather sheepish, as if the idea of Iriel threatening Maeli’s honour while he was away was inherently ridiculous, but he felt the need to maintain the correct husbandly protocols. In an odd, conflicted sort of way, Ire appreciated the effort. In any case, from the way Maeli was laughing from behind the screen, he suspected the ridiculousness of it was more to do with her than him.  
  
Courtesy made him close his eyes immediately upon lying down, but exhaustion wasn’t far behind. Even the knowledge of his trial in the morning couldn’t compete with a full stomach and the feeling of having washed properly for the first time since Dagon Fel.  
  
She crept over on sock-muffled toes, scrib-shell lantern held low, careful not to wake the baby. Kneeling next to him, she whispered fiercely: “Outlander!” When he didn’t respond, she shook him, and he yelped. “Oh, relax,” she sighed, as he squinted at her apprehensively, shuffling up onto an elbow. “This won’t take long. I only…” - she glanced quickly to the doorway and back - “All I need is for you to tell me where she is. Mashti. My sister.”  
  
He coughed and pushed back his hair. “You really don’t think I’ll live through this test, do you?” he said, managing a grim half-smile. “You think it’s now or never.”   
  
Maeli shifted her jaw, lower lip jutting as she considered her answer. Her hair, loosed from its braids, ran wild across her shoulders like dark vines. “It’s up to the ancestors,” she said. “That’s the whole point. But our ashkhan’s moving so fast. He already had Zaba send a scout to place the sinyesh, so they can send you out at dawn. And yes, you might die, so I need to know now. Please. She’s my  _family_. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”  
  
All the tangled, contradictory answers he might give to that question clogged his throat, and he was trapped, momentarily, in them, in the uselessness of attempting any of them. Then he forced his way clear. She wasn’t really asking, after all. He swallowed, hard. Nodded, carefully. “Is there anything you can tell me about the ghost-trial?” he ventured. “Anything you can do to help me?”  
  
She huffed in indignation. “You want to blackmail me? Force me to reveal clan secrets in exchange for your information?”  
  
“I want to not die!”  
  
“I… fine, but… I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know. It’s a tomb, a catacomb, and you must retrieve the sinyesh, the… test-thing. They’re using that glass stormsword, which is your one blessing, as it hasn’t been consecrated to the spirits yet. That would make it worse, but it’ll still be bad. Our strongest dead guard the burial grounds, and they don’t like non-clanbound visitors. I… I could lend you a weapon?”  
  
He sighed. “Never mind.”  
  
“So that’s it? You refuse?” Her eyes were bright and hard as rubies, and for a second he thought she was going to seize one of her many nearby blades, but the spark of her anger didn’t catch, dwindling into a pleading frown. “She told me she was getting married! That she’d met her soul-mate! I missed her like water, but I at least believed she was happy. Has she been alone, all this time? My own sister! I have to know where she is! If I wasn’t still nursing Arri… blood and ash! I don’t care, I’ll put her in a sling and leave tonight! I’ll–”  
  
“I beg you to tie up your tongue, outlander.” They both jumped as Zabamund spoke from the doorway. “Do not make my life harder than it is by causing my woman to vanish into night.”  
  
Iriel rolled himself back into his blankets and feigned immediate unconsciousness, as Zabamund and Maeli began to argue in low, forceful voices. They had retreated to their bed behind the screen, but he could still hear them. She vehement, emotive, he restrained, frustrated. Both increasingly agitated by a topic that clearly tore open old wounds.  
  
Ire didn’t begin to understand the depth of them until Zabamund said, in bruised tones: “You would trade all, then? Be made outcast? Reverse your choice, trade me and children for her?”  
  
“I never traded! I made no choice, she chose! Do you think I would lie, that I would let them kidnap my elder sister, that I might claim her betrothed? You think me such a woman, do you?”  
  
“No! My heart, my stars, I–”  
  
“You were happy enough she was gone, then! You were the one who argued for peace, it was your opinion that swayed the elders! You never wanted Mashti in the first place, why would you care about her now?”  
  
“I… Maeli, rilourbibi, I wanted you! I wanted always only you! But I spoke peace only because of your words, because you said she went willingly. Do you wish I did not? You wish I chased them down, reclaimed my bride?”  
  
“No! Yes! Because you are a good man, you would have been good to her. What did they do to my sister?! I will hunt them down myself, one by one. I will make that outlander tell me where she is. I will find her… I will… I…”  
  
“Ai… Maebibi, zulabibi, rileshabibi, I know you will, but not tonight. Not tonight. You have those who need you more.” He soothed her, whispering and crooning gently in hushed, breathy Velothi. Soon, they blew out the scrib-lamp, and all was darkness and soft respiration.  
  
Ire thought it was over, but after a while, the whispering began again, at first inaudible, then honeyed slivers were slipping through the blankets against his will.  
  
“….ing to stop me anyway? Would you challenge me again?”  
  
Subterranean laughter. “Ettai… Tell me, wife, who won last time, geh?”  
  
“You did, my husband.”  
“Un.”  
“Because I let you.”  
“Zannaaa!?”  
  
“I yielded as a kindness. I knew your weak shoulder couldn’t hold that lani-mohia form much longer.”  
  
Sounds of muffled outrage, rustling. Zabamund growling, low and earthy. “I think you enjoy yielding to me.”  
  
“I think you should challenge me again and find out…”   
  
  
Ire could have cast Silence, but he didn’t. He lay there in the dark, letting the sound of their love wash over him, feeling hollow as a reed, dry and bloodless as summer grass. He didn’t weep, but in time, he dreamed of rain.  
  



	124. burden

They braided his hair. Kneeling outside the yurt in the pre-dawn half-light, Maeli’s fingers pulling and twisting on his scalp, tucking his errant brown locks into several close-woven rows that converged at the base of his skull. She asked him no more questions.

They gave him new clothes. Waiting outside Talammu’s yurt, the first rays of the sun bright in his eyes, the wind from the sea fresh on his neck. He felt different with his hair pulled back, cold and exposed. Emerging, the sharp-eyed old widow handed him undyed woven things, with no adornment or embroidery. At her gesture, he changed inside the yurt, tucking the voluminous-thighed britches into his boots, and slipping into the wide tunic, taming it as best he could with his belt. Apparently acceptable to the ancestors, they let him keep the comberry cape.   
  
They offered him weapons and armour. Watching Zabamund fuss and fret, trying to make him at least take a shortsword and a light netch cuirass. Grimacing, shaking his head, accepting only a knife for his belt. He couldn’t imagine using any of it, and he’d be burdened enough by the hunting-yurt, light and portable though it was.  
  
They marked him for harrowing. Standing before Sul-Matuul, dipping his head low, more out of deference than need, for the tall ashkhan had no trouble reaching. Rough fingers dragged a wet scrape of paint across his face: three iridescent bug-blue strokes per side, running parallel from cheekbone to mouth. “Malacath’s nails mark one to be tested,” he was told. Next, a waxy, resinous substance, dragging a burnt orange zig-zag across his forehead “so that you may pass the threshold.” Finally, black dust from a small clay pot, smeared into the sockets of his eyes, rubbed into his lashes as he blinked and recoiled in surprise. “Ash of bone for eye of blood, to let you see the spirits truly.”  
  
They saw him off into the wastes, the whole tribe forming a silent, unmoving line along the ridge at the camp’s southern border. Most, he assumed, were there out of morbid curiosity at best. Still, if they found his participation ridiculous or offensive, they had enough respect for the tradition itself to save their scoffs and jeers until he was out of earshot. He heard nothing from behind him as he walked except the wind ruffling the chimes.  
  
Until he heard footsteps coming, fast and sure. Looking back, he saw a figure had broken away from the group, and was sprinting towards him, dark hair streaming. Maeli. He set down his pack and waited.  
  
Soon, she arrived, gasping for breath, her eyes filled with worry and distress. “Iriel! If… if you don’t come back…” In her voice, he heard guilt.  _One last, desperate attempt to gain my information, then._ “Is there… anyone I should get word to? Your family? Anyone who… would want to be told?”  
  
He stared at her blankly. Opened his mouth slightly. Closed it again, sucking in his lower lip. Finally, he shook his head. A second later, he was snatching up his pack and wheeling away, headed again into the Ashlands. The look on her face was impossible to bear, and irrational fury surged through him, stamping clouds from the ash as he walked.  
 _  
_ _You don’t know the first thing about me, so stop it, stop assuming your pity is warranted, when it’s the last thing I need, when we’re nothing alike, when you have no idea why I make the choices I do. Sometimes sparing people the truth is a kindness. Perhaps I understand your sister better than you do._  
  
  
At this time of year, Urshilaku camp still being in its winter location, he had a day’s hike separating him from his destination. At least, that’s what Zabamund had estimated, appraising him dubiously. Ire hadn’t yet been hiking for three hours when he met the scout sent to prepare his trial returning, on a lean, muscular riding-guar, bounding across the hills. The scout raised a hand in salute, and Ire returned an awkward wave, considering that at least it meant he was going in the correct direction.   
  
As it turned out, he couldn’t keep that up.  
  
By late afternoon of the second day, he’d spent hours wandering in circles, cursing dead ancestors of all bloodlines, and everyone who thought having anything to do with them was a good idea. He was thankful that his current state of emotional sterility prevented tears from ruining his ritual face-paint, though sleeping in the hunting-yurt couldn’t have helped. More accurately: not sleeping. Having been offered no instructions for the curved poles and guarhides, he’d ended up with something more akin to a dead spider than a shelter, and the wind had blown ash onto him all night. Xarxes only knew what his hair looked like.  _It doesn’t matter,_  Viatrix told him sternly, inside his head.  _It’s symbolic_. He made a face at her.  
  
Rounding an outcrop he was sure he’d already checked behind, he knew he’d finally found the burial caverns for two reasons. The first was the shimmering blue ghostfence across the entrance. Ire was under the impression that all localised ghostfences had been forbidden on Vvardenfell, the remains that would have powered them being donated instead to the maintenance of the Great Ghostfence around Red Mountain. He supposed it was no surprise to find that Ashlander tribes flouted this rule, presumably on the principle that, the Tribunal having got themselves into this mess, the Velothi owed them no help getting out of it. Considering they were the first to suffer from blight-winds and ash-beasts, Ire wondered if they’d really thought their position through.  
  
The second reason was Julan, seated in wait by the cave-mouth. Looking no better than Ire had seen him last, but rising swiftly as he approached, an odd, shifting expression on his face. “You took your time,” he said. “I almost thought you were going to turn and head off down the foyada and back. Again.”  
  
Ire rolled his eyes. “I suppose it was too much to hope that you might have saved us both time, and showed me where it was, if you’d already found it.”  
  
“Looking for a friendly native guide? Sorry to disappoint.”  
  
Ire threw down his pack and folded his arms. “Why are you here, then?”  
  
“You’re asking me?” Julan was incredulous. “Why are  _you_  here?!”  
  
“I’m being tested.”  
“No you’re not!”  
“Yes, I fucking am! Not as Nerevarine, but as initiation to be clan-bonded.”  
  
“No.” Julan’s jaw set like granite, words scraping through clenched teeth. “You’re not.”  
  
“Oh, you think, do you? Are you going to stop me?”  
  
“Yes.” Holding Iriel’s gaze, he sidestepped, until he was blocking the entrance, blue light radiating behind him, swirls of magic catching in the tangles of his hair.  
  
Ire glared back, the obstructive pettiness of it boiling his blood. The sun was setting behind the mountains, flooding the ashlands with its copper glow, flooding his face with it. His eyes shone like embers in their ash-stained sockets.  "I strongly suggest,“ he said quietly, "that you get out of my way.” Extended loosely at his sides, Ire’s hands began to coruscate with rapidly multiplying white sparks. He stalked slowly forwards.  
  
“No.” Julan stood firm, feet braced, unarmed but ready. “You’re making a mistake. You don’t know my people like I do. This isn’t a test, it’s a–”  
  
He didn’t finish. Iriel, discharging his accumulated magicka into the ash with a noise of pure exasperation, smacked him across the face instead. A wisp of common sense, reminding Ire at the last minute that he had no idea how to throw a punch, opened his hand, but the blow still contained all the hydraulic pressure of rage and frustration his steam-powered body could bring to bear.  
  
He’d expected him to block it, quite honestly, the wind-up had been obvious. But Julan’s head cracked sideways with the force of his palm, and for a moment, neither of them moved, suspended in the echoing aftermath. Then Julan blinked, shifted his jaw experimentally, and slowly turned his face back to Ire with something that looked a lot like relief.  
  
Iriel wasn’t interested in that. He was already shouting. “How dare you! How dare you pull that ‘my people’ guarshit now! You can’t stand this, can you? You’re terrified of the idea that if I complete this trial, I’ll be more of an Ashlander than you!” He began channelling power into his hands again, fluorescing with the disquieting violet of alteration magic.  
  
“Just stop and listen to me!” Julan’s hands were pushing him back, trying to steer him away from the cave mouth. “You don’t  _understand_ –”  
  
Iriel wasn’t having it. His anger, carefully constructed in secret for so long, had finally escaped the laboratory, and was thundering down the mountainside towards the village. His face was contorted, snarling: “How dare you tell me to stop, how dare you touch me now!”  
  
Magicka flared out from his hands onto Julan, surrounding him, lifting him off his feet, as the Dunmer’s eyes widened in familiar panic. But while what Iriel was doing incorporated levitation, its boundaries didn’t end there. Manipulating the aetherial forces acting on an object has many subtle variations, and Ire knew several, some of which he was applying simultaneously. Julan’s body was suspended, and at the same time, made unbearably heavy, arms and legs dragged downwards, impossible to move. His head sagged like a lead weight, chest heaving as he struggled to breathe.  
  
“And how  _dare_  you tell me I don’t understand!” With a flick of his fingers, Iriel rotated Julan’s personal gravity through ninety degrees, and he slammed into the nearby rock wall. “Sheo-fucking-gorath, you have no idea what you put me through, all because you couldn’t comprehend the things I’ve had to do to survive. Yes, I lied to you. Why’d you think? Yes, I hurt you. I’ve always hurt people. I’ve always  _had_  to hurt people, it was made really, really clear to me a long time ago that my survival meant hurting people. I learned that from the  _very beginning_.”  
  
Telekinetically twisting Julan’s head around, Iriel compelled eye contact, noses inches apart. “She often told me she wished I’d never been born,” he told Julan’s rigid face, in a breathless, staccato monotone. “She meant it as an expression of love. Of ultimate love, perfect unison. Blind, thoughtless, swaddled in her, one bloodline shared between us. But nothing about this world is perfect, is it? Nothing is constant, except endless, violent separation.  
  
"She tried her best. Tried to love me in the ways this broken world would still allow; to reclaim the shadow of that synthesis. To have faith I was still, in essence, part of her. Merisse once said that my ma sounded like a narcissist, but she was Breton, she didn’t understand. It’s what family  _means_ , where I come from. What children are  _for_. So don’t tell  _me_ I don’t understand about  _your_ mother, don’t tell  _me_ I don’t know about doing things for other people.  
  
"People ask why Altmer are so similar, so traditional, why they all become their parents. I grew up knowing,  _knowing in every fibre of my being_ , that every step I took away from her caused the person I loved most in the world pain. Was a personal injury. If I was foulblood, she was foulblood. When I turned on her, I tore her apart with as much agony as the day I was born. Wrenched myself off like a limb, like a branch she could never regrow, burned, cauterised. I knew that, and I did it anyway. Because it was her or me. Except far more than her, and barely even me.  
  
"More than her, because with her in the path of my ego-soaked destruction stood my pa and Firi, everyone else I loved. And let’s not forget all my precious fucking ancestors, our entire bloodline, all cascading down onto me. And who was that? I say 'barely even’ me, because the thing I thought of as myself, distinct from her, was scarcely a sprout. A pale, anaemic scrap, creeping out of the earth. A weed, a nothing. It had no right to weigh its existence against all those people’s wishes, all that blood. To do so would be pure selfishness and cruelty. I should have let it wither. I should have let it be washed away by the blood, let her swallow me again, numb myself, choose love and obedience, choose the only annihilation I ever had the courage for.  
  
"But I didn’t. I chose hate. I chose hurting people. I chose selfishness and cruelty. I chose the weed, and I watered it with tears and fed it on spite, so it grew up thorny, bitter and poisonous. But it’s mine, it’s me, it’s too late to be something else now. I had to be this, it was the only thing that could live in that toxic soil.”  
  
Julan’s head was crushed against the rock by a colossal force, his lips barely able to shape words. “Iya… please…”  
  
“Don’t you 'Iya’ me! You tore that off already! You tore everything, but I don’t care any more! I’ll grow it back, worse, but stronger! I’m staying free now! I’m not going back into the dark, not the earth, not the womb, not the Emperor’s jailhouse. If playing along with this prophetic guarshit is what I have to do, then I am going to do it, and you can stay the  _blighted fuck_ out of my way!”  
  
With one final thaumaturgic twist and shove, he sent Julan sprawling back from the cave-mouth, flying through the air and skidding into the ash on his back. Iriel didn’t turn to monitor his progress. Ritual marks on his skin tingling, he passed through the ghostfence and into the cave.  
  



	125. hunger

The cold hit Iriel first, clutching his whole body as soon as he stepped into the cavern, making him shudder and gasp. His breath didn’t cloud the air. This cold was not physical, but, literally, spiritual.  
  
The darkness seeped over him next, as his tentative steps took him beyond the soul-bright glow of the barrier. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a long, wide tunnel, extending deep into the rock. The roof was too high to make out, but stalactites reached down, dripping luminescent liquid in an envious and sickly green. Beneath, hollows had been cut into the rock, so that the glowing liquid collected and pooled, providing just enough light to hint at how deep the shadows went.

The larger stalagmites had been smoothed off at the point and levelled into plinths that towered above his head. Sending up a magelight, Iriel made out a small, shrivelled figure, folded foetal between two bugshell shields, a spear resting between its hunched knees. Heart in his mouth, he waited, but it showed no signs of animation. Only a corpse, on its own personal pedestal.  
  
“Iriel!” He started, as Julan called out behind him, the magical barrier making his words vibrate and distort. That, and the genuine fear in his voice. “Ire, please. Listen to me, it’s… it’s a ghost-trial, yes? That’s what they told you? That you’re being tested by the spirits?”  
  
Turning, Ire made out his dim silhouette against the light, barely upright, forcing his heavy limbs to move.  
  
“They lied to you!” Julan continued, between laboured breaths. “It’s not a test, it’s a deathtrap! It’s a way to get rid of you, and honour the ancestors at the same time! What ashkhan would send an outlander into the sacred burial caverns, unless he was sure they would die? The marks on your face… you’re marked for death, Iya! Your soul was sent as food for the hungry tomb guardians, that’s the whole point!” A knee gave out, and he lurched downwards, clinging to the rock wall.  
  
Ire watched him struggle, impassive. Then he said, “Do you really think you’re telling me anything I don’t already know? I’m quite aware why I’ve been sent here.”  
  
“Then–”  
  
“I _know_ , I just don’t _care_. If I succeed, they’ll give me clan-rites, their rule-bound legalistic pride will force them to keep their word.”  
  
“But you won’t succeed, you’ll die!”

Ire shrugged. “Shouldn’t that make you happy?” He began walking downwards, into the dark. “I’ll finally be out of your way.”  
  
“Iya, _wait_ …”  
  
“I …ed to… lk to… … _ease_ …”  
  
“……CK…!!”  
  
  
*bzzzt* …thnk.  
  
  
Deeper and deeper, colder and colder. Ire shivered, though he knew that was an unnecessary psychosomatic reaction. It wasn’t exactly his body heat that was under threat. It cost the spirits of the dead dearly to remain on the mortal plane, and they reclaimed energy in whatever form they could. A slow siphoning from the soil, from plant roots, from psychelite crystal deposits. Ideally, though, from living souls.  
  
Ire recognised the phenomenon from lectures. Souls consisted of energy, but also generated it. In mortals, this newly created energy could usually be stockpiled, by some more efficiently than others. Magicka, the source material of spellcasting. While the dead couldn’t consume the raw power of his soul without a fight, the more powerful had ways of intercepting his psychic by-products. He could feel them, quietly leeching away his excess magicka. He was, on some level, already being eaten.  
  
In principle, this was horrible. In practice, it was worrying. All he had to get himself through this was his wits, his nerve and a headful of spells. Without potions, he was already going to have difficulty regenerating his magicka fast enough to cast, and now it seemed resting would only make things worse.  
  
Stepping carefully over time-worn stones, past ranks of desiccated, mummified Ashlanders, Iriel ran some quick cost-benefit analyses. He pared his strategy down to the bare essentials: _no unnecessary illumination spells. Stay invisible. Destruction only if all else fails._ Calm spells were, unfortunately, a luxury he could no longer afford. The trade-off was a severe reduction in nerve, but having survived small-talk and scones with the undead, he rather hoped that if he could take that, he could take anything.  
  
He heard the first one before he saw it: the rough, rhythmic scrape of ancient bone on bone.  
  
Invisible, he forced himself forwards. _It’s fine. We’ve done this many times, now. They’re horrible, but they’re stupid and mindless and–_  
  
It was standing against the cave-wall, empty eyes blank, jaw opening and closing slowly. Scraping its arm against its skull in endless, meaningless, circular rhythm. The other limb hung limp, a rusted longsword secured to its finger-bones with twine. And Iriel, to his utter astonishment, was overcome by pity.  
  
If it saw him, it would attack, like all the tomb guardians he’d ever encountered, but until then, it only waited. Bound eternally to its role, to the clan, to its futile rage and unseen pain. It was a person, he realised - stupidly, of course it was, he’d known it was - but… _it was somebody. Who disobeyed their family in life and was punished with this, with being sent into the dark until_ _they lost themselves to it.  
  
_ Pressing a hand to his mouth, he hurtled past, and into the next chamber.  
  
He skidded to a halt at the edge of a pool of black water, its depth impossible to guess. The cavern continued via a high ledge on the other side, and he reluctantly spent precious energy levitating across.  
  
More ranks of mummified dead. A green glimmer drew his eye, and he saw one held a glass spear. Soon, he saw a shield, too, then an ebony helm. He scowled to himself.  
  
_I didn’t see a single living Urshilaku using glass or ebony. Even Zabamund and Maeli didn’t have anything like that for themselves. Why give these things to the dead, and make the living use leather and chitin? Who does such wastage help? It makes me so angry._  
  
_Why must we treat people like this? You are a good soul, you get a useless shiny present you’re too dead to appreciate. You are a weed, you get the cold, lonely darkness forever. Is there no compromise between the pedestal and the pit? Who, however godlike, has any right to administer such terrible justice?_  
  
He entered a wide, water-filled cavern. Broad stepping-stones, several feet apart. _Come on Ire, you have legs, you do not need to Water Walk this.  
_  
He jumped, unsteadily, from stone to stone. He was beginning to feel confident, when one foot skidded on wet rock and slipped into the water. He managed to avoid complete submersion, but his other ankle twisted and his yelp drew unwanted attention, spindly figures slipping one by one into the water on the far side of the lake.  
  
Adrenaline somehow got him across the rest of the stones, and he threw himself around a corner. Invisible again, soaked and bruised, agony shooting up his leg, he risked a furtive glance back. The skeletons were milling vaguely in the shallows, bones hooking and snaring together in a brittle, briary tangle. They seemed utterly oblivious to one other, twitching in confused frustration. He almost felt guilty for raising their hopes.  
  
Heralded by a slow-swelling roar, the tunnel opened into a massive chamber. Water poured into it from a source too distant to discern, tumbling down over a towering mass of stone, standing in the centre like a petrified giant. Yet more corpses were arranged into holes in the rock, precious gifts heaped around them.  
_  
__What do the dead want from us? What do they need? Gifts, tokens of respect that leave their families wanting? I don’t believe it._  
  
High above, he saw more openings cut into the rock, presumably leading to more burial chambers. A narrow, spiralling stone walk-way led upwards, curling around the central colossus, branches leading off into the distant tunnels. Limping heavily, he began to climb.  
  
He thought the first side-chamber was empty, at first. Except for the corpse, of course, laid out on a stone plinth, bedecked with amulets and charms, a skooma bottle resting between its leathery fingers. He wondered if perhaps some wise women used the drug to obtain visions.  
  
He was still staring at the bottle when he heard a moan in his ear, and what felt like iced feathers caressing his neck. Jerking around, he saw nothing, but when he touched his neck, his fingers came away coated in translucent slime.  
  
The wraith rose up behind the corpse-bier, arms extended towards him, mouth hollow with yearning. He screamed, and tried to run, hobbling frantically back to the main chamber. To his relief, it didn’t follow, though he watched the passage for long minutes, arms wrapped around his chest. Fingers clawing at his neck in revulsion and… there it was again, nosing up softly through the dark like a tiny mushroom: pity.  
  
_They just want to be remembered. They want someone to look at them, touch them again. They still want love, don’t they? This is what’s left of us, when all else is gone. This return to nakedness, to this mindless, blind longing for contact.  
  
It’s abhorrent. It’s cruel to keep them here. Here, where they still crave love, can’t even find respite from that in death. It’s monstrous to keep calling them back, throwing them trinkets, pretending we haven’t moved on. Let them go. Let them rest. Let them forget us, cold, heartless and peaceful._  
  
The second and third chambers held yet more skeletons, but no sign of the sword he was to retrieve. One was a tomb so ancient, all trace of the occupants had crumbled away, only dust and rags remaining. He found, instead, some foolhardy interloper’s abandoned satchel, though the only thing intact in it was a small glass bottle. He held the faded label up to the nearest glowing pool. “Quarthe’s Esoteric Elevator: You’ll be Jumping for Joy! (or your money back)” Ire suspected that regardless of the efficacy of the jump potion, few adventurers landed in a position to claim their refund.  
  
Dragging himself along the highest reaches of the walkway, he arrived at the final tomb. He was on hands and knees now, both from the pain of his ankle, and the very real risk of slipping and falling to his death on the treacherously wet and narrow stones.  
  
He was dangerously low on magicka, but invisibility was second nature, costing him little. He slipped past the skeletons in the winding passages leading to the burial chamber.  
  
There it was: the corpse of an ashkhan, arrayed in glorious ebony armour he had probably never worn in life. An ebony war-axe lay along his breastbone, and a Daedric dagger at his feet. There were rubies in his eye sockets. Iriel found it all quite nauseating. Fortunately, he didn’t have to touch the corpse to regain Julan’s stormsword. The glass longblade rested on the ground in front of the bier, awaiting its formal dedication, if Maeli’s words were true.  
  
Ire picked it up. He’d never wielded it, obviously, but it was still a comforting familiarity, in this place of hunger and despair.  
  
He almost dropped it again, when the ashkhan’s wraith came howling at him from the back of the cave, spectral hair coiling like malignant tentacles, fleshless hands raised in arcane assault. It hurled a roiling red clot of magic into his chest, and he staggered, leaning on the sword, overcome by weakness as something vital and warm was sucked out of him and into the ghost.  
  
Through the maelstrom of entropic void, a thought dragged itself free of the spiralling drain. _Fuck. This. You’re almost there. Fight, idiot, you’ve got more life in you than anyone else in this place. That’s why they’re jealous, that’s why they want to steal it. Or destroy it, if they can’t have it. But it’s yours._  
  
Snarling, he drew all his remaining magicka together, froze it into a ball and flung it down his outstretched arm. And nothing happened. _Fuck!!! Of course it’s immune to cold, it’s dead, what was I thinking?!_ The ghost, groaning like an accordion of the apocalypse, reached for him, its fingers penetrating his chest, suffusing his body with cold so intense he thought his heart had stopped, frozen solid. He tried to draw breath, but his lungs were blocks of ice.  
  
The sword was still in his other hand. Somehow, he raised the blade, and made it connect with the vaporous form of the spirit. Again, nothing, and the cold was shaking through him, blurring his vision. He forced in a breath, chest aching with the strain. The ghost was preparing to cast again, and whatever the spell, his chances of surviving it were slim. His ears were ringing, and he could barely stand. His fingers around the sword were tingling. _Wait!_  
  
Frantically, he twisted the grip, feeling for the indentations he knew had to be there. As he slipped his fingers over them, one by one, he felt the sigils spark as the magical circuit was completed, activating the soul-energy bound into the blade.  
  
Ire understood nothing of swordsmanship, but enchantments, he knew. As he triggered the shock spell, he forced all the charges into the blade at once. When it made contact, the entire soul’s power unloaded into the ghost with a booming thunderclap like the slamming of a sarcophagus. When he opened his eyes, he was alone.  
  
Until the sound brought them all towards him, shambling, bones crunching together in their eager haste and desperate need. He heard them coming for him. He had no more charges, and no more magicka.  
  
Ire clutched the sword and ran.  
  
They were outside the burial chamber, and he forced his way past, using the sword as leverage, screaming as they clutched at him, kicking and elbowing his way free. His ankle was agony, but took his weight. He skidded down the spiral walkway, more undead wobbling out of the side-tombs as he descended, falling the last few feet into the water, scrambling up the rocks and into the next passage, straight into the next clutch of skeletons. Tearing free, leaving most of a sleeve between tomb-dusted teeth.  
  
He reached the flooded chamber, seconds ahead of the horde. Dotted all across the subterranean lake, he saw pale, round things, like buoys on the water. They began to move, and he realised. He made a desperate leap for the first stepping-stone. Success, but the pain from his ankle as he landed almost made him black out. If he tried again, he wasn’t sure his luck would hold. The pale buoys were coming closer, beginning to circle. A bony arm emerged, dripping, made a grab for him, missed. They were tangling through the door behind him now, too.  
  
Then he remembered. Fumbling in his pocket, he took the bottles in his fist. Flicking the corks out with a practised thumb, he tipped everything into his mouth.  
  
And flew.


	126. strong

“…xpect you to believe me. I know I don’t deserve your trust at this point. You probably can’t even hear me, but then… I’m not sure I could say all this, if you were looking at me. You can fit more scorn into your eyes than anyone I’ve ever known. And you’ve _met_ my mo…”  
  
Darkness and stillness. But fresh Ashlands air in Iriel’s nostrils, and warmth in his bones. And a bitterly familiar taste on the back of his tongue.

“…een thinking. I hadn’t really done that for a long time. I thought I was, but I wasn’t. I was just… doing things to stop myself from thinking, because I had to stay angry, that was the only way I could… do anything. I couldn’t look at it all properly. And… later… I couldn’t look at myself. But…”  
  
He was lying down. He managed to curl a finger, which met fibrous softness. He was lying on a blanket. He twitched various parts of his body, experimentally. Detected no pain, even in his ankle, and that filled him with a prickling unease.  
  
“…on’t know what I’d have done in your place. I tried to… I mean… I can’t imagine it. Being locked up for so long. I go mad if I have to stay inside for… uh. Sorry. Not _mad_ , just… um. Anyway… I have no idea what I’d have done, I only know it’d be stupid and make everything worse, like always. All-purpose life advice: decide what Julan would do, then do the opposite. You were always better at thinking everything through than me. I don’t know why I ever…”  
  
He opened his eyes. Still dark, but a long, grass-green shimmer told him the stormsword had made it out too. Nauseous, vitriolic dread began to bubble up through his chest.  
  
“…bviously still not _happy_ about the whole Imperial spy thing, but… I get that you never had a choice. And I treated you like shit, and… I know that I don’t deserve your forgiveness after how I acted, but I needed you to know. That I’m sorry. For everything, and… just… I don’t have the words for how sorry. And I–”  
  
Iriel lurched suddenly upwards from the waist, and felt his head connect with guarhide. He was in the (correctly assembled) hunting-yurt, and the sky beyond the arched entrance was filled with stars. Between the two was Julan’s dishevelled silhouette, elbows on knees.  
  
Red eyes flared in the darkness. “Iy… Iriel? Are you…?”  
  
“I appear to be fine.” He tested his ankle, rotating it suspiciously, brow furrowed. “I gather you’ve been looking after me again.” He was swaying slightly, but his voice was sharp and brittle as an icicle. “Funny how that keeps happening, whether or not I ask you to. Whether or not it’s remotely necessary. But then, wasn’t that the basis for our entire relationship?” He whipped his gaze back to Julan. “I’m beginning to think you needed someone to need you far more than I ever actually needed you in the first place.”  
  
Julan blinked and recoiled. His face moved from the yurt’s shadow into the icy glow from the tomb’s spectral barrier, lighting it pale and uncertain.  
  
Iriel snorted. “There I go again, always so ungrateful. Making it difficult. It’s so much easier to look after people when they don’t answer back. Like foetuses, babies, plants. You can project whatever you want onto them, and they’ll never have any needs or desires beyond you. It’s easy to love things when they’re _weak_. Isn’t it?”  
  
“…What?” Julan sounded dazed. “I don’t…”  
  
Ire’s hand found the glass sword beside him, and gripped it. “You liked me when I was helpless, when I couldn’t do anything for myself. You can’t take the possibility that I might be stronger than you. So now, when I’ve passed this stupid test you swore would crush me, when they’re about to give me clan-rites, NOW you come crawling back? Putting up my fucking tent, kissing my ankle better, playing nice, hoping I’ll remember how much I really need you, putting me back in my place?”  
  
“I… only wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”  
“Yes. You said. Good. You should be. Unfortunately, I’m just not that interested. So are you finally _leaving_ now, or what?”  
“If… if that’s what you really–”  
“IT’S THE ONLY THING I’VE WANTED FROM YOU FOR THE LAST FUCKING MONTH!!!”  
  
Julan took a long breath. “OK. I… I know I haven’t exactly… I mean… I didn’t expect you to just… OK.”  
  
He braced to stand, then hesitated, fingers flexing and releasing in the ash. “But… you should know… You’re good at being right about things, but you’re wrong about this. I never wanted you to be weak. Iya, when I tried to stop you going into that cavern, and you walked towards me, hands full of magic and eyes full of murder, I just wanted to… I…” He tripped on his words again. Sighed. Swallowed. “I’ve never seen anyone look so beautiful in my life.” He rubbed his neck, staring blankly down at the grey mush surrounding him.  
  
“Yes, I think I get the message, thank you.” Iriel’s eyebrow quirked, though his tone remained coldly professional. “Sadly your dick is not a participant in this discussion.”  
  
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like… well… look, but… what I’m trying to say is…” His shoulders sank, as his voice began to catch. “I was never the strong one. I… I thought you had it together, when we met! You saved me, you helped me! No one else had done that in so long. I thought… I wanted it to mean something.”  
  
“Well, it didn’t.”  
“Can’t I… fix this, can’t I do something to… prove I…”  
“No.”  
“Look… I’ll leave in the morning, but can I at least sleep here, can I come in and…”  
  
The look Ire gave him could have felled an ogrim. “Not bloody likely. For a start, you smell like a drunk threw up in a slaughterhouse. Which is not a fanciful simile, but an accurate description of your current existence. Fortunately, your colossal shit-fire of a life is not my problem any more. I need to cut my losses. I need solitude and peace. But the only thing I need from _you_ is for you to GO AWAY.”  
  
“I… yes. …Right.” Clumsily, Julan pushed himself to his feet and turned towards the Ashlands.  
  
He managed some six paces, each slower and more faltering than the last. Then he crumpled slowly downwards into the ash and began to cry.  
  
Iriel bore witness, stony-faced.  
  
“This doesn’t change anything,” he said. “I’m not unsympathetic, but–” his eyelid twitched “–all right, fine, but whether or not I’m compassionate has no bearing on whether or not I’m _right_.”  
  
He expelled air forcefully from his nostrils. “I don’t have to forgive you, simply because you’re sorry. The wounds you made won’t heal just because you want them to. That isn’t how it works.”  
  
His knuckles whitened against the sword-hilt. “You don’t deserve the slightest kindness from me.”  
  
Julan was emitting the wrenching, gasping sobs of someone who has put off tears for so long that now they’ve started and got a rhythm going, they can’t remember how you stop.  
  
“You were the one who called this manipulative emotional guarshit.”  
  
“What am I even supposed to _do?_ ”  
  
“I’m not taking you back. You’re not coming in here.”  
  
  
_is there no compromise between the pedestal and the pit?_  
  
  
Iriel sat quietly for long minutes. Staring at the distant stars, at the tomb’s frigid mouth. At the shaking figure on the ground, and finally, down at his own hands. His fingers curled around a faint blue glimmer. It fizzled out. Sighing, he pushed his hands into his hair, yanking out the remnants of the braids.  
  
  
Eventually, he crawled out of the shelter and lay down next to Julan in the ash.  
  
  
Time passed, and silence fell. They lay still, beneath the slow shift of the void-tears, high above.  
  
  
At some point, dawn broke.  
  
  
When the sun rose, Ire followed its lead. He took a long look at the sleeping figure beside him. Unbuttoning the comberry-cape, he laid it across Julan’s shoulders. He cast a spell. Then, with the stormsword in his hand, he started walking. Quickly, and without looking back.  



	127. comfort

“…Iriel?”  
  
A small, windowless room, with just a hint of curvature to the yellowstone walls. A large double bed with a thick, pine-green counterpane, neatly mended in places. Wooden furniture, well made but austerely designed: a cupboard, a chair. A bedside table bearing the relics of several days of sickbed: potion bottles, a washcloth and bowl, a burned-down candle in a redware holder.  
  
Julan stared glassy incomprehension from the bed to where Iriel sat, bathed in candle-light, neat and straight-backed as the chair beneath him. He was reading, or at least, fixing his gaze firmly on the pages of a small blue and gold book.  
  
“Yes,” he said, evenly, but with an edge suggesting Julan wasn’t the only one surprised by it.

“…Where…?”  
  
“Gnisis. The Madach Tradehouse, to be exact.” Ire spoke with the controlled precision of someone stepping onto a frozen lake. Who has completed all the calculations of temperature and density that wisdom permits, but knows there are factors beyond their control, and that ice is slippery.  
  
“But…” Julan tried to sit up, and couldn’t. His breathing grew hoarse and shallow, eyes swivelling sideways in alarm. “What’s wrong… with me?”  
  
Iriel flicked over a page. “‘Total physical collapse’ was a phrase the healer used, but that’s rather over-dramatic. I’d call it an infection made far more serious than it had any reason to be, due to your complete inability to– …your weakened bodily state. I’m not surprised you don’t remember. I had to leave you while I returned to Urshilaku camp, but then I Recalled to where I left you. I rather hoped you might long gone by then, recovered and taken the hint, but you’d barely moved. You were delirious, skin burning.” He raised one shoulder in a barely-perceptible shrug. “Almsivi Intervention landed us here, so we’re here.”  
  
“How…?”  
  
“I’ve managed worse when you’re drunk.”  
  
“No, I mean… why?” His gaze took in the contents of the table. “You… took care of me?”  
  
With clipped movements, Iriel closed the book and raised his head. Everything about him, expression, mannerisms, tone, all broadcast a careful, focused neutrality. “If not me, then who? You’d prefer I took you to your mother’s? A Temple infirmary, perhaps?”  
  
“I’d… prefer you… slit my throat.”  
  
Iriel’s lips fluttered open, then he thought better of it. “Don’t complain then,” he said, finally.  
  
“I’m not complaining.”  
  
Ire nodded, jaw subtly tensing at Julan’s tone of voice. He drew a purposeful breath. “Before you ask: no. We’re not. So don’t.”  
  
“I… get it. Thank you.”  
  
“Don’t thank me. Drink the rest of the potion on the table, and get some rest.”  
  
“But…” Julan’s voice was clouding with sleep, “the test. The Urshilaku. Did they… what happened?”  
  
“I spoke to the wise woman. She said I wasn’t the Nerevarine.”  
  
“So…”  
  
“So go to sleep.” Julan couldn’t help complying, and Iriel returned to his book.  
  
  


“What’re you reading?” Slurred words from the pillow, an hour later.  
  
“Oh… just one of Vivec’s sermons. We’re in a Temple town, so there’s precious little else on offer.”  
  
“Sheogorath…”  
  
“I don’t mind. I used to think they were nonsense, but I’m getting the hang of the style now. The notes help.” Ire held up the small, quarter-inch thick volume. “About three pages of this is the text, and the rest is commentary by scholars and theologians.”  
  
“Urrrgh…”  
  
“Don’t worry, I’m in no danger of converting. It’s interesting, that’s all. This one has the Dwemer in it, though it’s difficult to know how historically accurate their presentation is.”  
  
“He was there, wasn’t he? Vivec. Unless he lies about  _everything_.”  
  
Iriel  pursed his lips. “It’s not a straightforward question. He was mortal once, of course, but everything, past and present, was transfigured by his divinity. These stories might contain traces of fact, but they’ve been overlaid with so much holy allegory and reinvention, it’s impossible to say. And, frequently, disturbing to speculate. In this one, the Dwemer murder Vivec’s mother. She’s pregnant with him, and they cut her apart, forcibly removing him. Even in that embryonic state, he’s able to comfort her, soothe her with soporific words so that she dies painlessly."  
  
He pulled on a loose strand of hair, frowning into empty space. "It’s… strange. It’s described very simply, almost casually. Of course, we know that Vivec is a god, and his mother, here, exists solely to bring his godhood to birth. But at the same time… implicitly, it’s this terribly sad, traumatic event. Vivec the god tells us that it wasn’t, that he had the power to render the separation peaceful, all blissful acceptance, all according to his ineffable divine plan. But as readers, perhaps we wonder about Vivec the mortal.”  
  
Julan blinked sleep-crusted eyes. “I don’t get it. What d'you say it was about?”  
  
“I… well…” Iriel faltered, cornered on a treacherous patch of ice, dark shapes moving beneath the frozen surface of his eyes. He swallowed. “In part, at least… it’s about love. And how that’s something the Dwemer aren’t capable of understanding.”  
  
“D'you want to read it aloud? Even if it’s Vehk’s drivel, I wouldn’t mind the distraction.”  
  
“It’s… really not sickbed material, honestly. I’ll find you something better. For now, go back to sleep.”  
  
The candle guttered, the wick surrendering to its gradual engulfment by liquid wax. Iriel rose mechanically and began replacing it from a box in the cupboard. Digging out the stub with determined nails, using its last glimmers to light the next, pouring melted wax into the holder to secure it. Hands swift and automatic, barely even shaking. Julan watched, mesmerised by the small movements, until his eyes drifted closed. Iriel, shifting as a shadow, slipped out before he opened them again.


	128. tangles

It was hard to tell, in the candlelit subterranean quiet of the tradehouse renter-room, but it was morning. Iriel elbowed his way through the door bearing a tray: trama-root tea and a boiled kwama egg. “Drink the tea first,” he instructed, setting down the tray on the bed. “I mixed your next dosage into it.”  
  
“Never saw the point of tea,” muttered Julan. “First you have to wait for it to get hot. Then wait for it to brew. And  _then_ you have to wait till it cools before you can even drink the blighted stuff. I’ve got better things to do that sit around waiting for  _water_.”  
  
Iriel was hacking and scraping at the rubbery outer layer of the egg with a small curved knife provided for that purpose. “Not any more, you don’t.”

In mounting horror, Julan watched Iriel slice open the inner membrane and delve into the egg, separating the gelatinous nodules into bite-size chunks. “You don’t have to do that, I’m not a kid. You’re not… planning to hand-feed me, are you?”  
  
“Blessed Aedra, imagine the indignity.” Ire’s face betrayed nothing as his impatient patient grabbed for the spoon, and missed completely. “Starvation before dishonour, right?”  
  
Julan was staring at the egg as if it contained the sum total of worldly pain. He looked like a crippled sailor watching his ship sail out of harbour without him. “…I’m not even hungry.”  
  
Ire’s brows shifted upwards slightly as he continued dismantling the egg. “Words I never thought to hear. You used to give whole new intensities of meaning to the term ‘greedy’.”  
  
A distant look entered Julan’s eyes, and he gave a coughing sort of laugh that quickly degenerated into an actual cough. “Yet another of my cheap temporary rebellions,” he rasped. When Ire looked askance at him, he shook his head:  _forget it_.  
  
“It’s only that 'greedy’ was a dirty word when I was little,” he said, when Ire remained silent. “Mother used to go off on me like a half-cracked shalk if I wanted more of anything. Like it was an insult, that I was doubting her judgement. Sometimes she’d tell me going hungry without complaining was a test, almost a game. To increase my endurance, or something.”  
  
“And did it?”  
  
Julan shrugged. “No, but at least it shut me up. Look, I know what you think of her, but she was trying to help me. Until I learned to hunt, there  _was_  no more food, but she didn’t want me to realise she couldn’t provide it. She thought my life would be easier if I could learn to stop wanting things I couldn’t have. I don’t think it ever would have worked for me, but I get why she did it.”  
  
“Perhaps that’s what worked for her.”  
  
“…Maybe. I don’t know. She never said.” He shifted his jaw pensively, then turned his attention back to the egg. “At least let me  _try_  and eat it myself, OK?”  
  
“Let you make a horrible mess I have to clean up?” Ire’s mouth twitched at the corner, but all he said was: “Be my guest.”  
  
  
  
“Aargh! Look, just shave it. Shave it all off, I don’t care any more.”  
“Only if you honestly want that. Do you?”  
“No, but–”  
“Then hush and keep still. I’m not going to shave it.”  
  
Julan groaned and let his head loll over the back of the chair, eyes haunted, lips tight. “You don’t have to do this.”  
  
“I know.” Iriel worked the comb through the ends of another section. “I may have to wash it again, though. There’s even more ash and Xarxes knows what clogged up in the middle of the tangles.”  
  
“Oh gods… please just shave it. You must’ve been at this an hour already.”  
“It’s fine.”  
“It’s  _not_.”  
“It’s fine.”  
“Why are you doing this?”  
“Because it needs doing.”  
  
“Not by you! Is all this stuff a punishment? Your way of rubbing in how it feels to be weak, unable to do things for yourself?”  
  
Ire’s fingers stopped moving. “No,” he said. “Is that… how it’s coming across? As a punishment?”  
  
“…No. I might prefer it if it was.”  
  
“Would you like me to make it hurt more? On purpose?”  
  
“Maybe. I know you haven’t forgiven me, so why are you really doing this?”  
  
Iriel gently extracted a small, incredibly dead, beetle from Julan’s hair. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not about forgiveness. Or punishment, or justice, or… any of these things I don’t understand, couldn’t implement if I tried. I was hoping it could be about kindness.”  
  
“You said I didn’t deserve kindness.”  
“Exactly.”  
“Then–”  
  
“Nobody does. That’s the point.” Ire loosened a clot of hair, ash smearing across his fingertips. “Plenty of people have given me kindness I didn’t deserve. You were one of them, once. But it’s not personal, Julan, don’t  _make_  it personal. It’s not really about you at all. It’s about me wanting to pay something forward, not back. Be something other than the person I’ve been.”  
  
“It’s… about you?”  
  
“Right. Does that make it easier to bear? If I’m effectively using you for my own ends? To feel better about myself?”  
  
“I don’t know.” A pause. “Am I your new charity project, then? Like Kaye wanted you to be? Is this your revenge?”  
  
“Revenge?”  
  
“Or do you just get extra compassion points for being nice to someone you can’t stand.”  
  
A bruised silence fell, broken only by intermittent  _clink_ s as Iriel dropped small souvenirs of Julan’s vagrant weeks into the empty kwama shell. “I really am terrible at this kindness shit, aren’t I?” he said, at last. “This is why I’m not a healer.”  
  
“Well… ” Julan’s jaw began its unconscious slide back and forth again, teeth catching and scraping like disused cogs. “By what you said, if you were a healer, it wouldn’t be kindness. It’d be your job.” He shifted in the chair, shaking ash from the blanket around his shoulders. “Anyway, my attempts don’t go any better. Like when you collapsed outside the burial caverns.”  
  
“About that.” Ire’s grip had suddenly tightened on Julan’s hair. “I should… you should know, I…” He exhaled, forced his hands to relax before he pulled the section he was holding out by the roots, though if Julan felt anything, he didn’t show it. “What?”  
  
“My reaction wasn’t entirely… about you, or your behaviour. There were other factors involved, things you had no part in, and I may have…” He grimaced. “I was unfair. I apologise. Thank you for doing what you did.”  
  
“It’s… fine. …Thank you for fixing my hair.”  
  
“Shhh. Keep still.”  
  
  
  
“There. Could still use another rinse, but it’ll do. Mara, it’s longer than I thought. Do you want me to braid it, keep it out of your way when you’re next throwing egg everywhere?”  
  
“You… could do that?”  
  
“I was best friends with Firionwe of Lillandril, braid-queen of the Isles. Hair is a very serious business, where I’m from. It’s a sign of class, position, lifestyle. Nobody above merchant caste would ever cut their hair voluntarily, it implies you’re not in a position to take proper care of it. Or your occupation involves tasks so unbearably practical that even braiding isn’t enough. My pa cut his hair - too much wind and seawater not to. Ma wouldn’t let him cut mine. She wanted better for me.”  
  
He measured Julan’s locks speculatively. “Don’t worry, I won’t put you in silkvine spirals, Estermere sunrays or anything too elaborate. Just something simple to hold it back. I saw a few styles in the camp I think I could replicate. Unless there’s a cultural taboo I’d be violating?”  
  
“I… no… I mean… go ahead.”  
  
Ire began gathering strands into small sections. “I hated all this faff, honestly. I always wore mine loose if I could get away with it, easier to hide behind. Ma used to complain I looked like a pond-wraith, or the ghost of a drowned traveller from one of her songs.”  
  
His fingers pulled and twisted along Julan’s scalp, humming snatches of old folk tunes to himself, dimly bemused by how easy, how automatic it was, this ten-year-old muscle memory. He couldn’t see Julan’s face, but every so often, a hand would come up and brush furtively across it. He pretended not to notice.  



	129. tragedy

A huge rectangular parcel swayed erratically through the door, swearing. It crashed to the floor at the foot of the bed, and Iriel appeared, flushed as a ripe peach. “You try to do one thing without spells for a change,” he said, perspiration sliding down his cheeks, “and you are immediately reminded why you never, ever do that.”

Julan was leaning against the headboard at an awkward angle, face half-buried in the pillows. He turned part of the way around as Ire entered, one eye following him as he closed the door. “Started to think you weren’t coming,” he said.  
  
Ire was wiping his face and neck with a towel from a nearby chair-back. “Oh, don’t give me that,” he said. “I told you yesterday I’d be late because I was taking the strider to Vivec today. It was lovely, actually. I think I’ve caught the sun!” He fanned the hem of his short-sleeved tunic, dusky salmon patched pink with sweat. “I hope I don’t get any more moles coming. I do  _not_  need more moles.”  
  
He scrutinised Julan, suddenly suspicious of his lack of engagement. “Are you all right? You’re not relapsing, are you? If you’re tired, I can come back tomorrow. They did feed you and check on you while I was gone, didn’t they? I slipped Utadeek enough gold!”  
  
“The slave? Yeah, he gave me some… mushed roots or something.”  
  
The lack of indignation in Julan’s voice about the slave’s presence worried Iriel even more. He leaned closer, tucking loose strands of hair behind his ears. He’d tied it back with string, but it kept escaping. Then he saw it in Julan’s one visible eye: the frozen suspense of someone about to get found out. “All right,” he sighed. “What did you do?”  
  
In answer, Julan rolled over with a stifled groan, revealing an enormous red-purple weal across his right temple, and bruising down to his cheek. “Tried to go upstairs,” he said. Then, in tones bleak and brooding as a windswept heath, he added: “I  _fainted_.”  
  
Ire pressed his lips together as Julan continued, agonised mortification increasing, line on line: “I was carried back to bed. By an Imperial Legionary. A huge, burly Orc, who held me to his chest like I weighed nothing.” He closed his eyes, as Ire stuffed his knuckles into his mouth. “He called me  _‘pup’_.”  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Iriel managed to squeak out. “I can see you’ve suffered a terrible wound, not to mention one to your head. Was he cute, at least, your mighty hero?”  
  
Julan sighed so hard the bed creaked. “No.” A sullen pause. “More your type, really.”  
  
“Then I truly  _am_  sorry.” Iriel retreated to the foot of the bed. “Let me cheer you up. Do you know what I went to Vivec for?”  
  
“I hope it’s a big rock, to dash my brains out.”  
  
“Almost as good, I promise. I went to Jobasha’s, told him you were ill in bed, and asked him to recommend one or two things you might like. You should have  _seen_  the whiskery grin he got on him. So, of course he’s given me almost a dozen, and I’m sure only charged me for half. He packed it himself, I’m not even sure what’s in here, but I do know he remembered which volume you’d got up to with that An Arse on Fire series you liked.”  
  
“A Dance in Fire _._  Though your title fits, too.”  
  
Iriel had opened the parcel and was digging through it, reading spines. “Well, Jobasha knows his audience. It’s all black arrows, armourer’s challenges and last scabbards in here. Wait… what?” His face clouded at the small copy of  _Confessions of a Dunmer Skooma Eater_  tucked into the corner. “That’s really not fucking funny.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Ugh, nothing. That awful cat’s idea of a bad joke. Here, try this one. I think it’s got sexy pirates in it.”  
  
“Is there any other kind?”  
  
“You’ve never been around poorly-sterilised amputation sites, have you?”  
  
He’d told himself he couldn’t stay long, and the more they chatted amiably as if nothing had changed, the more Iriel was convinced that he shouldn’t. The allure of unknown books was strong, however, and he sank onto the chair, flicking through pages.  
  
A little later, Ire was faring better with the books than their intended recipient, who had dropped his onto the covers. “Gah… my headache’s too bad for this. Can you read one to me?”  
  
“No!” Ire’s knuckles whitened against the leather binding. “I really can’t.”  
  
“Please? I’m so bored, that’s why I tried to go up to the bar.”  
  
“I… really have to go… and…”  
  
“I mean… if you don’t want to read, you could sing to me instead. Maybe. If you wanted.”  
  
“…Fine. I’ll read to you. But only for a while, I have things to do. And I’m choosing the book, and don’t expect me to… to do the  _voices_ , or anything.”  
  
  
  
“What?” One short story later, Julan’s eyes were bright, his voice uneven, and for an incredulous moment, Iriel thought he might actually burst into tears again. But then his usual mechanisms kicked in, and he diverted the emotion into outrage. “That can’t be how it ends!”  
  
“See for yourself.” Ire held the final pages of  _The Last Scabbard of Akrash_  under his nose, but Julan flinched away, recoiling into the pillows. “I believe you, I just… Sheogorath! Why’d you read me that? It’s horrible!”  
  
“I didn’t know it would end like that when I picked it.”  
  
“Why… why would someone write that?! It’s fiction, right? It’s not a true story?”  
  
“As far as I can tell, it’s fiction.”  
  
“Sheo-fucking-gorath!” He began incinerating the ceiling cracks with his gaze, as if the author might be hiding in one of them.  
  
“I rather liked the ending,” confessed Iriel. “I’ve always found sad stories oddly comforting. Tragedies, especially. The well-worn structure of it, the lack of surprises. You know it’ll all end in tears, so you can relax, keep your expectations low, appreciate the spectacle of the collapse. Any pleasant things that happen along the way are an unsought bonus.”  
  
Julan was looking at him as if he were extolling the benefits of eating shit with a silver spoon rather than a steel one. “But why?” he demanded. “Why have stories like that at all? What are they for? To scare people, depress them?”  
  
“I… think perhaps the opposite.” Ire laid the book on the bed, and laced his fingers in his lap. “To help people accept that terrible things happen to well-meaning people, that everyone doesn’t always get what they deserve.”  
  
“But that’s horrible.”  
“Yes.”  
“Then why accept it?!”  
  
“Because it happens,” said Ire flatly, “whether you accept it, or not. So you need to find ways of dealing with it, or become overwhelmed by despair.”  
  
“I don’t understand how adding even more misery to your life helps you deal with anything! Haven’t you had enough pain?”  
  
Iriel wove his fingers tighter. “For me,” he said, “there is comfort in knowing that pain is a universal mortal condition. That every single one of us has flaws, regrets, things they’ve screwed up and ruined. And that no matter how hard you tried, on some deep, indefinable level, it was probably always doomed.”  
  
Julan’s eyebrows were skewed at an improbable angle as he pushed himself forwards on his elbows. “Did you really not wish the lovers had escaped? Been happy together, a Khajiit and a Dunmer, proving those slaving bastards wrong? Wouldn’t that be a better story than 'slave dies, everything goes back to being the same blighted shit as ever’?” He glared at the book again. “Why’d Jobasha pick that one? I thought he wanted books to change things.”  
  
“Sometimes this is as close as it gets, ” Ire said, distantly. “Most people aren’t ready to read about that sort of couple getting a happy ending. It wouldn’t be published. This way, there’s a certain plausible deniability to the sympathetic portrayal.”  
  
“It’s still guarshit.”  
  
Ire inclined his head in brief acknowledgement. “Perhaps the author hoped it would make people angry.”  
  
“I don’t need  _help_  with that. Anyway… if you can look at this world all your life, but a made-up person’s pain is what it takes to finally make you angry, there’s something wrong with you.”  
  
Julan lapsed into grim silence. After a while, Iriel said: “It’s far more romantic, being tragically parted by death. I thought you liked romantic.”  
  
“You think  _death_  is more romantic than living happily ever after together?”  
  
“Why not? You end things on a high note, instead of waiting until it goes wrong, peters out. People always fuck everything up, given enough time.”  
  
“Surely in a story, it doesn’t have to be that way?”  
  
Staring at the bedspread, Iriel twitched one shoulder into a shrug. “I don’t find happily-ever-afters comforting. I can’t relate to that sort of implausible fantasy. As if happiness were a simple thing, triggered by falling in love. It isn’t. At the end of the day, I’m always going to be me, and I’m no good at happiness.”  
  
“No wonder, if you keep reading tragedy for inspiration.”  
  
Ire’s face was tight as a mask. “Whereas, of course,  _your_ life goals are perfectly designed to maximise your happiness.”  
  
“There are more important things than my personal happiness.”  
  
“But  _I’m_  the one basing my life on tragic stories?”  
  
Julan was lying flat again, eyes vacant and weary as his voice. “I know you still don’t believe. But… look, I tried happiness once, and I wasn’t any good at it either. Shani, she… she had this plan to run away to Ald'ruhn together. Marry, work for her uncle, get, I don’t know, a house or something. And I agreed, but then… I couldn’t go through with it. Nothing about it felt right.”  
  
“Perhaps because it wasn’t happiness, it was you exchanging what your mother wanted for what Shani wanted. What do you want?”  
  
He rolled to face Ire, bruises traipsing livid stains down his cheek. “You  _know_ what. To make things better. To stop people dying all the time. I know you laugh at me, think I’m full of macho guarshit and stupid hero stories, but… I’m sick of tragedy. You called me a romantic, but d'you think I don’t know life isn’t like that? That my life isn’t? Maybe you’re right, maybe everything ends badly, but that’s not comforting. It’s not like in books where it’s a  _lesson_  that might make some rich s'wit have a feeling. It’s  _meaningless_. I’ve seen enough terrible things happen to real people that I don’t need it from books as well. Things should be happy  _somewhere!_ ”  
  
Iriel regarded him seriously for a few moments, chewing his lip. “I’m not going to make fun of you,” he said. “Honestly… I should never have undermined you like that. Crushed everything you’d been working for your whole life, and expected you to thank me. You’re right, I don’t believe in destiny, reincarnation or anything else that imposes a role onto you from birth, but I should have understood what it meant to you. I regret an awful lot of things, you know, so take it for what little it’s worth, but… I regret… giving you the impression I didn’t believe in  _you_.”   
  
He stood, a little too quickly, and his head swam. Making for the door, he somehow blundered into the chair he’d just vacated, and was forced to pause, to brace himself against the chair-back with unsteady hands. “It’s late. I have to go.”  
  
Julan frowned. “Where?”  
  
Ire ignored the question, gripping the chair as if debating whether to throw up, fall over or go for the double.  
  
“Are you OK?” Julan looked ready to try getting up, and Ire nodded desperately, waving him away. “I’m fine. Just a slight dizzy spell. I should get some rest.”  
  
“Listen, if you… um…” Julan’s words broke through his hesitation and began tumbling forwards with reckless haste. “You could stay here. I swear by blood and ash I wouldn’t try anything, or… I mean… there’s so much room. How much is all this costing, anyway?”  
  
Ire found his balance. “Don’t worry about money,” he said, releasing the chair. “And I appreciate the offer, but I need my own space.” He straightened his spine. “I have things I’m working on, Dwemer language things with Baladas Demnevanni. I need somewhere quiet, free from distractions.”  
  
“So… you’re back to the Dwemer research? It’s really all over with Cosades and… all that?”  
  
Iriel summoned something that was almost a smile. Something lacking the required motivating factors, running purely on determination and fumes, but trying so hard to be one, that its failure was somehow more endearing than its success would have been. “It’s fine,” he said. “You just concern yourself with getting better. Whatever happens next… I won’t stand in your way any more.”  
  



	130. celebrate

Shouts and stamping feet thundered yet again from the bar above. An ash-rough voice launched into a song about a faithful guar, several others chiming in for the mazte-soaked chorus.  
  
Iriel, his face locked in a permanent wince, kicked the door quickly closed behind him and leaned against it. “It’s not even dark yet, but its already full of drunken farmers up there! Making jokes about their seed. And the size of their  _yield_.” He rolled his eyes.

“Another kwama egg? Sheogorath…” Julan was on the bed, but fully dressed and twitchily restless, chewing on a fingernail.  
  
Iriel handed him the tray. “Life is filled with disappointment. And, in a mining town, kwama eggs. Deal with it.”  
  
“I’d rather hunt something with actual meat on it.” He extended an arm with a disgusted look. “Unlike me. A mudcrab might get the better of me right now. My physical conditioning’s been shot to the Deadlands. My head’s worse, though. Stupid dreams, stupid thoughts. I’ve got to get out of this room. If I have to spend any more time staring at these walls, I’ll…” He flicked his arm up with a growl of frustration, and glared savagely at the egg.  
  
“Bad day?” Ire glanced around the room. The fact it wasn’t messier was a testament to Julan’s lack of belongings more than anything else. A book lay on the floor, pages splayed and creased, as if thrown. Iriel rescued it and set it on top of the cupboard. “Not a fan of that one, I take it?”  
  
“No.”

Something in his tone made Ire pick up the book again and examine the cover.  _Poison Song_. “Oh, this one,” he said. “I haven’t read it, but Jobasha recommended it when I said you liked sensationalist historical fiction.”  
  
“Not that one.”  
  
Eyebrows raised, Ire scanned the summary: _lost scion of House Dagoth succumbs to murderous madness_. He didn’t push the matter further, tucking the book away inside the cupboard, instead.  
  
“What’s got them so riled up in the bar, then?” Julan sounded keen to move past his dark mood.  
  
“It’s First Planting,” replied Iriel. “It gives them all spring fever, apparently. Drinks are half price.”  
  
“First Planting? Really?” Julan’s expression was such a strange mixture of surprise and grim amusement that Iriel stared at him, head on one side. “I didn’t have you down as much of a farmer. Why the interest?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t care about the festival. Just means I survived another year, is all.” He twisted his mouth at a sceptical angle. “Somehow.”  
  
“It’s your birthday?” Ire was cynical enough about his own that enthusiasm wasn’t his primary impulse, but he was still intrigued.  
  
Julan shrugged. “Close enough, far as I know. I count from then, anyway. I was a foundling, remember?”  
  
“Mhhm.” Ire knotted and released his fingers, hovering by the cupboard. “So… how old are you?”  
  
“As of today, twenty-three.”  
  
Iriel visibly relaxed. “Thank the fucking ancestors. After a certain point, I didn’t want to ask. I had honestly begun to dread that you might be considerably younger than I had initially supposed.”  
  
Julan snorted. “You mean I’m immature.”  
  
“I only–”  
  
“No, it’s fair.” He looked philosophical. “I’ve always lagged behind other people. Shani’s younger, but it never felt that way.”  
  
“You were socially isolated,” said Ire, “and you’ve had a very piecemeal education. It’s hardly your fault.”  
  
“I guess. Sick of it now, though.” His face broke into a sudden grin that Iriel found very disconcerting. “Come up to the bar with me tonight! I feel fine, I swear. You never stay past dinner, but for once? Go on…”  
  
Ire blinked. “So you want a birthday party, now, do you? Should I also be poaching honeyfruit dumplings and weaving you a sindil twig crown?”  
  
“Wha… no! We don’t do that stuff! I count the years, but it’s not… I don’t  _celebrate_. I’ve never even… Anyway, you hate parties.”  
  
“I was joking. But… I suppose I could handle the bar, for a little. Assuming you can make it upstairs without help. I’ve spent enough time carrying you out of bars that I’m not about to start carrying you into them too.”  
  
  
  
Despite Julan’s claim that he didn’t celebrate his birthday, he certainly had no problem using it as an excuse to milk everyone in the tavern for as many free drinks as he could get. He insisted on sharing them with Iriel, who drank a small fraction, and quietly poured the rest into unattended mugs.  
  
Even so, he still found himself blurring at the edges, huddled miserably in the corner on his own, while Julan debated cheerily with a man in a guarskin sou'wester about the proper cultivation of muckspunge. It never failed to amaze Iriel, in a horrified sort of way, how three drinks could activate in Julan the ability to talk endlessly on subjects he knew nothing about.  
  
Ire slumped further in his chair. There really was, he considered, no reason for Julan to have insisted on dragging him here in the first place, for all that he was contributing to the occasion.  
  
Explosions of familiar indignation from the other side of the room. Julan was gesticulating wildly at a small, tattooed Dunmer in oversized Legion chainmail. Ire grimaced. He’d been wondering how long it would be before this particular combustion reaction was ignited. Spearman Asha-Ammu Kutebani, known to his comrades as “Ash”, was something of a rarity: an Ashlander who had signed up with the local Imperial Legion garrison. “How do you sleep?!” he heard, and “How do your ancestors not haunt you night and day for your betrayal?!”  
  
“I sleep on clean sheets with my gold under the pillow,” came the cheerful reply, “and you never met my ancestors. They’re all far too frightened of the Legion to come after me. They know the winning side when they see it, and so do I.”  
  
“But…!” Although Julan was choking on outrage, Iriel was surprised to realise he was being consciously theatrical, rather than genuinely angry. His eyes bulged and his brows convulsed, but there was no threat in his body language towards the wiry Velothi Legionary. “How many of our people have the Imperials butchered?” he demanded, to which Kutebani shrugged.  
  
“I can’t speak for your lot, but none of mine that I’ve noticed. They were all killed by the Erabenimsun before any Legion could get there, see? You got to be quick where I’m from, butchery’s a popular occupation. I figured I’d get me into one of them big stone yurts, as don’t burn so easy. I killed more Velothi as a clansman than I ever have in the Emperor’s warband.” Kutebani had an easy smile, and before long, Julan did too, though he continued to argue, sitting on the table and swigging his mazte.  
  
The sun had set, and Iriel was on the point of leaving, birthday or no birthday. He was bombarded by noise, surrounded by strangers, and infiltrated by a bitter, if unfocused, melancholy. The headache wasn’t helping, and neither was the alcohol. What  _definitely_ wasn’t helping were the occasional bedraggled Dunmer who tugged on his sleeve and asking if he was, y'know,  _doing business_ , until driven away with swearing and threats of unspecified magical violence.  
  
Finally, Julan abandoned his newfound friends and well-wishers, reeling back to Ire’s table with more full tankards. “Heyyy,” he began, then, seeing Ire’s expression, attempted to mould his sloppy grin into something more contrite. “I’m sorryyy. It’s just so great to talk to people, see new faces, not be in that room!”  
  
“Not be stuck with me, you mean.”  
“Awwww, Iya. You’re still my favourite.”  
“Shhh, don’t talk rubbish.”  
“You are!”  
  
Ire glared at him, eyes narrowed. “Start that sort of talk, and I won’t give you your present.”  
  
“What present?” Julan frowned. “Don’t go giving me stuff, there’s no need! …What present?”  
  
“The one I went back to my room for, while you were massacring your egg.” He dragged a long object from beneath his chair, wrapped in a towel. “You can look, but don’t take it out, we’re not really allowed it inside the bar.” He pushed it onto Julan’s knees, beneath the table.  
  
“Iya.” Julan could tell without unwrapping it, knew from the moment its weight hit his lap.  
  
Iriel saw the look in his eyes and immediately regretted everything, but it was too late now. “It’s not even a present, technically,” he mumbled.  
  
“Iya _._ ” Julan looked like he’d never stop beaming. It was a relief when he turned the spotlight of it away from Iriel to flick aside a corner of the towel and gaze down like a new father, green flashes dancing in the red of his eyes. “ _Iya_. You got Slaughterfish back!”  
  
“It… it really wasn’t any great effort on my part. Apparently I was allowed to request a boon as part of my initiation, and… well, I couldn’t bear the thought of it gathering dust in that bloody tomb again. It’s a criminal waste. At least you’ll use it, appreciate it.”  
  
“Iya. You have no idea.” Julan was bouncing slightly in his seat, as if he might vault the table and hug him. Ire fixed him with another warning glare, and he restrained himself, but still beamed. “What can I do to… to… I  _can’t_ , how can I possibly–”  
  
“You can say thank you, and then never mention it ever again!”  
  
“ _Thank you_.”  
  
The alluring proximity of his recovered precious kept Julan at the table, after that. Which meant Ire had less solitude, but more mazte, and, the fickle gods of alcohol proving kind for once, found himself drawn, little by little, out of his shell. An hour later, he was regaling, in an increasingly broad Lillandril accent, an audience of Julan, Ash Kutebani and a couple of Orc troopers with horror stories about surprise birthday parties he’d hijacked with howling, hyperventilating meltdowns.  
  
“I didn’t think Altmer had fun,” one of the Orcs chuckled.  
  
“We don’t,” Iriel said firmly. “Everything we do is specifically designed to make us as miserable as possible, it’s traditional.”  
  
“You don’t have feasts, or summoning days?” The younger Orc, Snakha, apparently found this incredible.  
  
Kutebani pursed his lips. “I heard once that the Altmer worship sacred strings of numbers, not gods at all.”  
  
Ire reclined on a slightly unstable elbow. “If only. That sounds far more bearable, honestly. You’re asking if we have cerebra…celebraray… fucking festivals and all that shit?”  
  
He took a fortifying mouthful of mazte. “Oooh yes, we have those. Not the Imperial ones, true, but other horrible practices we’ve spent millennia designing to torture ourselves with. Things where you all have to put your shiniest clothes on and your fakest mask, because Aedra forbid you show an improper emotion, wash your face Iriel, the neighbours’ll think we’ve been  _beating_ you. And we are  _definitely_  a perfectly normal civilised upstranding Lill'ndril family who are DEFINITELY not papapering over the cracks in anything, nooooo!  
  
“So then you all drag yourself to the temple and sit through it, trying not to fall asleep, because the liturgy has been this exact length with all these exact words since the First Era, and Stendarr’s mercy, our blood will LITERALLY vap… p… what’s the opposite of purify? Corruppify is  _not_  a word. Is it just corrupt? That doesn’t sound dramatic enough. CORRODE! that’ll do, corrode. I wanted it to have more syllables, somehow.  
  
“What was I saying? Oh… so… temple was better than home, at least. I could never decide if it’d have been worse if we had lots of relatives I had to  _perform_  for, but on ma’s side, we were Dead To Them, and everyone on pa’s side was dead to everyone, on account of them all being actually literally dead. So it was just me and my parents, staring each other down, while my ma served endless food she’d slaved over and aggressively  _spent time with family_  at us, till she’d had enough booze to get angry about me and my pa not joining in or only eating the rice or whatever. Then the  _real_  traditional Altmeri fun began!” He grinned cadaverously, and drained his drink.

  
Some time later, raising his head from the table, he derailed a discussion about cliff racer population control to interject, apropos of nothing: “I thought of a nice thing! An actual nice festivey thing! My pa used to celebrate the Day of Lights! It’s not a proper official thing in Summerset, but it’s a coastal thing, a fisherman thing. He’d carry a candle down to the boats with the others, and sail them on the water, and sing songs for safe fishing and good winds and firm upstanding lighthouses an’ shit.  
  
“I liked that one. He used to let me carry his candle, when I was little, and one year I let it go out. I got so scared, ‘cause that was bad luck for him, see? Except when we got to the docks, and I was going to have to tell him, I somehow… made a light. In my hands. I’d never done that before. And he stared at me, and started laughing, and so did I, and I let the little magelight float out to sea with the other candles. Gods… I’d almost forgotten about that.”  
  
Around midnight, the bar began emptying, farmers and Legionaries, however festive, being early risers by necessity. As the others left the table to get in one final round at the bar, Julan tilted his mug. “D'you want another?”  
  
Ire shook his head. “And you shouldn’t either.”  
  
“Probably. Still gonna, though.” He tipped the last drops into his mouth.  
  
Ire watched him with an incautious smirk. “It’s like fingers in your arse, isn’t it?”   
  
Julan raised his eyebrows and took a moment to swallow. “That so?”  
  
Ire nodded sleepily. “It always seems like if three is good, then four’d be better, and before you know it, you’re insisting on downing the whole bottle, as it were. But more often than not, you just end up with pain, embarrassment and regret for the entire next day.”  
  
Julan was either laughing at him or sighing, possibly both. Head dropping forwards, hair skimming the table, hand still gripping the empty tankard. When he looked up, there was a frankness to his lop-sided smile that sent sparks jolting down Ire’s vertebrae.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, “but… sometimes the only thing that matters is you get  _completely_  fucked, right?”  
  
Iriel, suddenly very awake, held his gaze until it became too risky to continue. Then broke away, heat flooding his face. Hamstringing certain possibilities had now become the safest option by far. He slid a fistful of gold across the table. “Get as many as you like.”  
  
He waited until Julan was at the bar, doubled over laughing at something Kutebani had said to Nash, the bigger Orc. From the pantomimed threats the Orsimer was making, grinning from sideburn to bushy sideburn, it involved carrying both of them down the stairs at once. Begging a passing barmaid to tell his friend he was too tired to stay, Iriel skittered out of the tradehouse like an electrified rat.  
  



	131. weapons

The lamplight of the Madach Tradehouse behind him, Iriel sidled invisibly through the dark backstreets of of Gnisis. He could have cut across the exposed and empty main square, but some windows overlooked it, and old habits died hard.

 _So this is how it feels_ , he’d thought, witnessing Julan’s descent into misery back in the Ashlands,  _to be a sociopath. To move beyond sympathy, to finally succeed in severing your decisions from_   _the pain they bring others. To cause suffering and feel nothing._

Now, as he skirted the Temple walls, he wondered if he hadn’t over-corrected a little too hard. He drew a long, shaky breath and massaged his imploding head. Going to the tavern had been a terrible idea on any number of levels.  
  
He arrived at the vacant cave-house he was unofficially occupying, one of a series of crude dwellings carved into the cliffs near the mine. He’d found it boarded up and condemned, but the ceiling was only slightly collapsing, only leaking on one side. Sufficient for his purposes. He fumbled the Open spell a few times before the door released under his hand.  
  
It was true, people were so much easier to deal with when they were helpless and pitiable. You could maintain a nice, sterile safety-barrier of dispassionate compassion. Now, he was rapidly losing control of the situation, but despite everything, he’d managed to stick to the plan. For now. Considering Julan’s improved physical condition, it was definitely time for phase two. Starting first thing in the morning. Tonight, he had an order to finish, and an appointment he was already late for. Moving to a lichen-covered table, he lit the flame beneath his calcinator, and began setting up his alembic.

Two hours later, in the chilly small hours of the night, he was back on the streets. A bagful of vials was tucked under his arm, hugged close against his body. After a short stop at the home of a sleepily irritable pawnbroker, his bag was lighter, and his purse heavier. Then, chameleon and silent, he ghosted along the outer wall of the Legion garrison. At an unobtrusive side door in the forbidding stone fortress, he decloaked. Knocked on the door with a hand that by this point had begun to tremble violently.

“It’s me. Sorry I’m so late,” he whispered into the crack of light that lanced out of the door. “Is tonight… I mean… do you still want me here?”  
  
“Of course.” The Orc who opened the door was like a broad, mature oak tree wrapped in a brown flannel robe. He folded a paternal arm around Iriel’s stiff-clenched shoulders, shepherding him into the firelit room beyond. “I was waiting up for you.”

A further pair of hours passed before the door opened again, and Ire staggered back into the night, blinking against the sudden darkness. His host supported him by one arm, his legs struggling for balance.  
  
“For the last time, lad,” the Orc rumbled gently, “it’s no trouble for you to sleep here, as you were doing before. I was getting used to having you to breakfast.”  
  
“No. Thank you, but no. I have…” Ire shook his head slightly, and rubbed his neck. “I have to… be going, I have… more things to, tonight I’m… must… I… won’t see you for a while, but…” He abruptly plucked his arm free and veered off towards the backstreets. “…Thank… night.”  
  
“Stendarr’s strength and mercy is always with you.”

Back at his commandeered cave, he spent much of the remaining time before sunrise in a wild blur of feverish action. There followed a period of catatonic inaction, where he lay, locked motionless, but battling the black claws of sleep, flinching from exhaustion’s sunken stare. Dreams chased him down, even in waking. Brass pistons thundered out of the raw stone walls, metal limbs extending to crush him, joints screaming for oil. Golden faces floated in the air above his straw mattress, decrying betrayal, howling of cursed skin. The usual. He let it wash over him, waiting for silence to return, as he knew it must, eventually.  


In the last, dawn-drenched minutes before the silt strider’s departure, Iriel skidded down the Tradehouse stairs, and slipped a sheet of paper under Julan’s door. One side read, in erratic, ink-splattered scrawl:

_Star-wounded sword of MALAC-AZUR-BOETH,_

_We must seek out new motions. Say no elegies for the melting stone, for SITHISIT is built against stasis, and stasis asks merely for nothing._  
  
_The evoker shall raise his left hand empty and open, to indicate he needs no weapons of his own. The evoker is always invisible or, better, in the skin of his enemies, but the sword is an impatient signature. From teacher to lover to enemy to enigma, but the skin of my mystery was long-since stripped of its revelation. Your passage through will gain you no secrets that you do not already know._  
  
_Boethiah-who-is-you wore the skin of Trinimac to cleanse the faults of Veloth, and so it should be again. Turn from your predilections, broken like false maps._

_Cocoon yourself in the silk of the moth, not of the ancestor, but of the starry heart. Be cloaked in your former enemies, and use their machines without shame. Move and move like this._

_For by the sword I mean the merciful, the birth of God from the netchiman’s wife, which is the abortion of kindness from love. Take up your ardent cutting globes._

_For by the word I mean AE ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME_

_My walking way excludes the sword, but if I am to become a weapon of the hands of change, I must hunt down and murder my children. I have yet to learn how to refine my rapture, and my love is accidentally shaped like a spear._

_Now go and misinterpret this. For we go different, and in thunder._

_Yours in rundown absolution,_

_The clockwork simulacrum of the fisherman’s son. MEPH-SHEOG-BAL_

  
On the other side, was written, in a rather more controlled hand:

_Julan,_

_Please ignore the fuckery on the other side of the paper. I was horribly drunk last night, and please also ignore literally anything I may have said._  
  
_I’m getting out of Gnisis for a bit; I have some loose ends I need to tie up. Some found in places where people might throw you in the sea and/or river if they see you, so it’s to everyone’s benefit that you stay here, especially yours. Nothing personal._  
  
_Long ago, I agreed to train you in magic, but let’s face it, I can’t teach you much else you’re likely to find useful. It would be far more beneficial for you to get some skilled weapons instruction. I’ve made arrangements for you and Slaughterfish to train with the Legion swordmasters. Stop making that face, nobody’s asking you to serve the Empire. If it helps, think of it as stealing their techniques to use against them. Know your enemy, and all that._

_I left some gold in your room, which is paid for for the next fortnight. After that, I have a professional opportunity for you. One last Dwemer ruin, to complete my research and conclude our arrangement, though I consider all prior obligations long since discharged. This is one-off, paid work. If interested, meet me on the 21st at Sorkvild’s tower, outside Dagon Fel. No, I do not mean the tavern, they’ll throw ME in the sea if they see me there. The Dwemer tower half a mile to the east. I trust you can find your way there on your own this time._

_Iriel._


	132. flakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [sinilakki](http://sinilakki.tumblr.com/) for the illustration of Iriel and Sottilde in this chapter!

“I  _have_ broken up with him!” Iriel sprayed her with vehement cake crumbs. “That’s what all this is about! We broke up months ago, and we’re still broken up!”  
  
Sottilde’s expression didn’t change. “None of this sounds even a little bit slightly like remotely broken up.”  
  
“I know, but, look, I’m being a reasonable, responsible adult about it.”  
  
“Aw, come on! The entire bright side of getting dumped is you never have to be reasonable or adult about anything to do with them ever again! Anyway, you’re not even being it.” She tapped him on the clavicle with a pastry-fork. “You’re doing that thing you do, where you pretend to be all logical sciencey abracadabramatrician, but all you’re really doing is pushing words out of your mouth that sound like reasons to do whatever stupid thing you feel like doing.”

“I am not!” He was genuinely upset. “I’m not saying I’ve  _never_ done that - though it’s honestly so fucking rude of you to remind me -  but right now, I’m trying to do the opposite! To ignore all my untrustworthy, self-sabotagey emotions, desires, thoughts, all that guarshit, and consider the facts of the matter! Xarxes knows I’d rather run away from all this mess. That, at least, I know how to do.”  
  
He sighed, and vandalised the icing on his Glenumbra gateau with a fingernail. “It’s just… he’s a walking disaster, Tilde. I need to make sure he’s going to be all right, on his own.”  
  
“Why? How the blighted nix-shit is that your problem? That asshole tried to hit you!”  
  
“No, I said he  _didn’t_  hit me.”  
  
“Oh, good for him! Next you’ll be telling me he didn’t rape you, murder you, or give you a Markath Moustache right before your nanna walked in.”  
  
“A…? …No, he didn’t.”  
  
“Well! Man of the year, then, clearly. Apart from all the bits where he exploded for no reason, harassed and stalked you for weeks and damn near drove you out of your mind!”  
  
“And we’ve broken up!”  
  
“I’ll break  _him_ up.”  
  
“Til-dove, you couldn’t break your tart up until you went and asked for a fork.”  
  
“Then I’ll  _use_  a goddamn _fork_.” She speared a candied rooberry and crushed it between her teeth, glaring at him pointedly until they both burst out laughing. Then she groaned. “I can’t talk you out of this? You’re still going to see him again?”  
  
“I know it doesn’t… sound like a good idea, and perhaps it’s not, but–”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
“But every other option seems worse! It’s all under control. I’m still cutting ties with him, just… in a responsible, adult way.”  
  
She beat her fork against the table in time with her words: “No. Such. Thing. Kyne’s knickers, Ire, you really are the worst at breakups.”  
  
“I know.” He pushed his plate towards her. “Do you want the rest of this? I can’t eat it.”  
  
“Is it nasty? I did wonder how in Oblivion they’d made Glenumbra gateau from the stuff you can get around here. Bitter Coast Bogcake, is it?”  
  
He stared helplessly at the thing on the plate. “Once you adjust your expectations, it’s… actually quite nice, I just…” For a moment, he teetered on the verge of tears. “I thought I wanted it, but I don’t.” 

  
  
They left the small Breton tea-shop and walked through Balmora’s rich Hlaalu hightown towards the street of the guilds. Ire scanned the signboards as they passed. “You’re certain the Fighter’s Guild would be the wrong course?”  
  
“Dead certain. They’re all twisted up with the Camonna Tong somehow.” As the the Council Club approached, they both instinctively ducked down an alleyway rather than walk past. Even there, Sottilde’s voice dropped to a whisper as she said: “Was one o’ them dickbaskets took my codebook, and got me into all this trouble. The last thing you want’s a stalky ex with greasy, murdery Tong pals.”  
  
Steering her towards the lowtown bridge, Ire’s lip curled sceptically. “I really don’t think that’s very likely. But I need to encourage him down  _some_ route. Left to his own devices, he’s incapable of taking any independent action that’s not horribly self-destructive and woefully ill-advised. …What?”  
  
She waited until she was safely across the river before she spoke, just in case.  
  
“I take it all back.”  
“ _What?_ ”  
“You’re perfect for each other.”  
  
  
Unsure of Cosades’ patisserological preferences, Iriel had opted for a selection of small flaky pastry bites. Each was filled with a different sweet paste, made from a range of unsuspecting local ingredients that had probably hoped to meet a nobler end.  
  
The Spymaster extracted one from the box and held it up, suspiciously. “It’s green. Why?”  
  
Iriel hunched defensively in his chair. “I think she said marshmerrow was involved, somehow. I promise, if I were trying to poison you, I’d have waited until I’d been paid before I offered them.”  
  
Cosades smirked. “Could be slow-acting.” He chewed the pastry with a gradually lightening expression, shrugged, swallowed, and took another. “Your report,” he commanded. “You were to meet with the leaders of the Nerevarine cult, and be tested. What happened?”  
  
Iriel meshed his fingers in his lap. He had reconstructed this narrative endlessly on the way to Balmora, not because he planned to lie, but because the strange encounter kept twisting into new shapes in his head. He no longer felt sure what was important, and what was curious but irrelevant detail, and no matter how many times he’d played them out in his mind, some parts refused to make any sense at all.  
  
  
 _“Hello?”  
_ _  
_ _“Hello.” A shirtless teenage boy, no more than sixteen, squats on the floor of the yurt.  
_ _  
_ _“You can’t possibly be the wise woman. Where is she?”  
  
_ _He smiles, points behind him, upwards, to… to…  
  
_ _…a wilderness of woven silks, an overgrown forest of fabric, looped snarling and coiling like jungle vines. Suspended in a chaotic cobweb of cords, beaded feathered and charmed, strung erratically from the arching poles of the yurt, taking up the whole back wall. And in the centre, something like a cocoon.  
_ _  
_ _“Is she…?”  
  
_ _“In the dreaming place. She stays there almost all the time, now. It’s easier for her.”  
  
_ _“So… can I…?”  
  
_ _“Talk to her? Aye, clan-friend, you can. Step closer, so she can see you. She likes that. She has no Tamrielic, but I will translate your questions. I am called Yen, and it is my honour to serve the spirits.”  
  
_ _I move forwards. Yen unties the end of something, and the cocoon lowers, swings round, and I see her, swaddled and sleeping, impossibly small, hands curled like bird’s claws beneath her chin. Tiny raised dots swarm across her cheeks in spiral trails. All else is hidden beneath her swathes of wrappings.  
  
Yen whispers to her, and she opens her eyes. They are larger than I expected, red and luminous, the colour bright and startling in the washed-out grey of her face.  
  
_ _She looks straight at me, and she smiles.  
  
_ _I was out with my mother once, when she met an acquaintance with a baby. She started playing with it, whether out of a genuine affection for babies, or a desire to drop terrible hints at me, I couldn’t say. All she was doing was hiding behind her hands, then reappearing, but that baby was mesmerised. When it couldn’t see her, its face would fall into a slack-jawed state of awe-filled anticipation. Motionless, awaiting something it knew would be wonderful beyond all imagination.  
  
And, somehow, it was. Some random stranger on the street flapping her hands around, every single time, it made that baby’s face just… radiate with joy, like a flower opening, like the sun breaking through the clouds, like every awful sentimental cliché ever. It was so pure, that joy, so pointlessly, meaninglessly pure. It was the stupidest fucking thing I’d ever seen.  
  
_ _Anyway, that’s what I think of, when Nibani Maesa smiles at me.  
_  
 _Then she says, still holding me in her eyes, still delighted, still smiling: “Harilem!” Her voice is like silver feet dancing through moonlit grass.  
  
_ _Yen stares at her, surprised and slightly appalled, evidently reluctant to translate. “I think she is confused,” he says, after a moment. “She has seen only clan for so many years. She thinks maybe you are a different person. I… maybe we give her a little time, to…”  
_ _  
_ _“Yen!” She looks at him, her smile gone. She ripples a stream of Velothi, as he winces, and nods.  
  
“I am sorry,” he says. “I dishonour my task. I speak only her words now.” He bows his head, and for the rest of our interaction, he keeps his promise, though he does not tell me what she had previously said.  
  
He doesn’t need to: I already know. Less from my limited Velothi, and more from the look in her eyes. Which some Imperial optimists might like to believe indicated recognition, reincarnation, dream-vision… but I don’t think so. I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I only know that she told me she loved me.  
  
_  
Ire didn’t mention any of that. With Cosades’ iceberg of a stare bearing down on him, he kept it as simple as possible: just the prophetic verses she had sung to him, that he had copied down Yen’s translations for. How she’d laughed, when he had asked if he passed the test. Even so, by the time he had finished, the pastry-box was mostly empty, containing a few abandoned half-way on the grounds of cruelty to corkbulb. Mostly by Iriel, who, after his jokes about poison, decided he had better show willing.  
  
“So.” Cosades brushed the last pastry flakes from his fingers, and got down to business. “What I’m hearing is that she needs more information.”  
  
“I knew you’d say that–”  
  
“Then you know what we–”  
  
“…but you’re missing the point! …With respect, um… boss. Nibani Maesa wants the lost prophecies, true. She thinks the Temple have them–”  
  
“I’ll send word to Mehra, see what she can dig up. In the meantime, I need you to–”  
  
“No!” Iriel was wide-eyed, but determined to control his nerves long enough to get his message across. “No no no, listen, I’m not finished! You don’t need me to do anything! I didn’t pass or fail the test, because there  _was_  no test! You are not the Nerevarine, she said, you are one who may become the Nerevarine. Do you  _choose_ to become the Nerevarine? A question with a very simple answer, as far as I’m concerned!” He flapped his hands at Cosades, forestalling interruption.  
  
“None of these prophecies matter, lost or found, they’re just snares! Traps to catch idealistic fools with no better option than try to be heroes, to kindle some gossip and false hope among the clans for a while. If you and the Emperor insist on trying to hijack this sad business for your own ends, fine. But you don’t need  _me_. Anyone would work, you can pick an agent more suited to it. Someone who can better impersonate a hero.”  
  
The Spymaster’s brows came down like an avalanche. “Convenient for you.”  
  
Iriel met his gaze with the utmost sincerity. “Convenient for  _you_ ,” he said.  
  
Cosades turned away, pacing a short circuit around the tiny room. “You might be surprised,” he said, after a moment. “You’re right about one thing: his Majesty wants a hero. Thinks that’s what we need, to show the provinces the way forward. But we’ve tried it before, and somewhere along the road, the wheels always fall off the cart. I’m beginning to think it’s the heroes that are the problem. Impatient fools with no awareness of how historical processes actually  _work_.”   
  
Pausing, his blue eyes homed in on Iriel. “I think you’re exactly right about these prophecies. And I think you being in a different category from the usual blundering sword-swinging idiot might not be such a bad thing.”  
  
He swivelled back to pacing. “But there are other factors in play, and it’s not up to me. I’ll consider the matter, and pass my report along the usual channels. And you’re still a Blade, Iriel, don’t think you can get out of that. Whatever happens, I’ll have uses for you. You’re dismissed for now, but expect new orders as soon as I hear what’s been decided.”  
  
Iriel was limp in his chair, eyes closed. “Is it too late,” he said, “to poison the pastries?”  
  
  



	133. anonymity

When Iriel got home, Helende was sitting in the window seat, filing her nails with a metal rasp she normally used to reshape lockpicks. Celegorn was sprawled alongside her, his head in her lap, eyes blissfully closed. Bliss for Iriel too, as it meant he didn’t have to look at them.  
  
“Well!” Helende smiled. “The wanderer returns. How did it go?”  
  
He’d planned to confess everything, but Cel’s eyelids peeled back for a fraction of a second, bottomless black pools yawning open in his pale shaved skull, and Ire couldn’t do it. “It… went,” he offered.  
  
“Sometimes that’s the best we can hope for,” Helende said brightly. One of her hands paused its task in order to stroke Cel’s ear, producing a sound from the Bosmer like an orgasmic wasp. “Are you here for dinner?”  
  
“Yes, but I’m leaving on a research trip tomorrow. How are things with you?”  
  
She grimaced. “Professionally, on edge. We’ve intercepted enough reports to know the Tong are planning something big, but not what or where.”  
  
“I’m sorry I can’t do more to help. As soon as I’m back from Mzuleft, I’m all yours.”

Her pale hair shone golden in the afternoon sunlight as she leaned back against the window, the mushroom towers beyond providing her with an elegant frame. She was wearing a twisted ebony pendant that he hadn’t seen before. “Should I assume from your words,” he enquired, “that personal affairs are running more smoothly than professional ones?”  
  
“As your commanding officer, that’s a  _most_ inappropriate topic of conversation.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I see. That well?”  
  
Smugly enigmatic, she swiped the file back and forth. “No comment.”  
  
Ire, taking the hint, was retreating to his room, when she added, scrubbing hard at a particularly recalcitrant forefinger, “Do you know what I miss about Khajiiti girls?” He gave her the blankest of all possible looks. “They  _never_  complain your nails are too long!”   
  
He was almost at the stairs when she called to him. “You’re heading up to Sheogorad again?” She scraped her teeth along her lower lip, eyes narrowed. “You may be able to help the Guild after all. My best lead on Both gro-Durug’s whereabouts is that someone saw an Orc in a rowing boat, heading north from Tel Mora. I don’t hold out a lot of hope at this point, but if you can make enquiries, I’ll provide something towards expenses.”  
  
Cel’s eyes flicked open again as Iriel turned away, and he felt them clinging to his back like beetles, all the way through the house.  
  
  
There was a sealed roll of parchment on his bed. He stared at it. Then scanned the room: the trapdoor, magically warded, no sign of tampering. The window, closed and too small to admit a person. The absence of any other exits or entrances to the attic room. Helende had mentioned nothing about any post. He took a step closer, gingerly, as if the scroll might explode.  
  
There was no name on the outside, but the wax seal bore a pair of Daedric letters he recognised from his gloves. A hand flew to his mouth to meet a terror-tinged smile. He had fully expected nothing to come of that meeting, in Vivec.  
  
_“Would it be possible to find out the name of a client from a completed job?”_  
  
_“You know better than to ask me that, Operative. A client’s anonymity is sacred.”_  
  
_“What if… Iriel wasn’t the one asking. What if the Bal Molagmer were asking, because an injustice needed correcting. Wouldn’t that be sacred, too?”_  
  
_“Hmm… It might. Put your gloves on. Then start talking.”_

He couldn’t open it yet, couldn’t make concrete whatever action he’d committed himself to. At the very least, he needed tea and a smoke first. He slipped back down the ladder, ran through the bar and collided with Muriel on the stairs, sending her basket of dirty clothes flying.  
  
“Sorry,” he gasped, scrambling to help her reassemble her load. “I didn’t see you there!”  
  
She chuckled. “Don’t fret, it’s just my magic power acting up again. Once I got fat and forty… poof! Invisible!”  
  
He smiled weakly, not quite understanding the joke. “Really? How do you like it?”  
  
“It depends. Most o’ the time, I like it fine. Makes a change from before, see? I used to feel nothing  _but_ visible.”  
  
Suddenly animated, he shook a sock at her. “I met a brothel girl in Suran who said you were famous. Were you really?”  
  
She shrugged, bending over the basket. “I was, and I wasn’t. Those in the trade might know my name. Most people wouldn’t, but they might know other things. Some o’ my prints are still getting passed around, after all.”  
  
“You wrote?”  
  
A shake of her head, and a grin. “Artist’s model. You ever hear of a thing called Boethiah’s Pillow Book?”  
  
“I seem to recall Aengoth was after a copy for a client once, but I didn’t get involved. It’s Daedric erotica?”  
  
“Forbidden by the Temple. That’s why most of the Dunmer girls refused to model for it. The artist ended up using me and a shortish Altmer gent for most o’ the work, then changing up our features to make us look more Dunmer. Took hours to get right, did some o’ the poses.” She hoisted the basket higher on her waist. “On days when me hip’s playing up, I question if it was worth it. It led to more, though. The artist and me hit it off. We worked together on all sorts o’ things. That edition of The Real Barenziah I lent you, with the hand-tinted etchings? The nudes in there are me, too. All banned, o’ course!”  
  
“Auri-El.” Ire was impressed. “If I got another copy of that Pillow Book, would you autograph it so I can send it to Caminda in Suran?”  
  
“I can’t! Not in my own name, I told you. They get proof I did it, they’ll come after me from the Temple and throw me in that big rock o’ theirs!”  
  
Iriel laughed, until a stillness in her grey eyes made him stop. “You can’t be serious.”  
  
“Those pictures may have been banned, but they were very popular, in all sorts o’ circles. People who had no idea they were looking at some dirty human woman, and not whatever Dunmeri priestess or queen was in their fantasy.” She gave him a knowing smile. “Some men get very defensive, in nasty, petty ways, when they find out they’ve been attracted to someone they think they shouldn’t be.”  
  
He sighed. “I’m well aware.”  
  
Abruptly, his grimace morphed into a grin. “So… you’re not just invisible, you’re hidden in the skin of your enemies!” He was about to explain the reference, but she was already laughing.  
  
“I wouldn’t call them enemies. But someone’s been reading old Vehk’s Sermons, I see. You want to be careful with those, some o’ them can be a good deal less metaphorical than you might want.”  
  
Iriel peered down at her, blinking in surprise. “Yes,” he said, “It’s a terrible problem. What’s worse, I’m finding some of the smut really  _is_  an allegory, after all!”  
  
Muriel’s eyes creased with merriment. “Oh, you poor dear. Even more embarrassing than a Breton girl, that, finding out you’ve been taking your pleasure over an allegory.”  
  
He followed her back up to the bar-room, newly mesmerised by his unassuming landlady. “I never even thanked you, did I?”  
  
“For what, love?”  
  
“For caring for me, the first time I was getting clean. I thanked Helende, but you were the one bringing me soup and cleaning up vomit, all the horrible, daily, bodily awful.”  
  
“I didn’t do it for thanks, pet.”  
  
“I know. You did it because someone had to. But still. Thank you. You never made me feel ashamed, because your presence was so… transparent, so impersonal. You never made me feel a burden, because you made it all seem weightless. If you felt anything at all, I never knew it. It’s… an incredible skill you have. Dangerous, even.” He took the basket out of her hands, and although she rolled her eyes, she smiled and let him, going instead to collect tea-towels from behind the bar. He strode after, chewing his lip.  
  
“Muriel–”  
  
“Call me Em, if you like.”  
  
“Do you ever feel… invisible to yourself? As if you’re this… empty, shapeless vessel, that sometimes gets filled up with sadness, or anger, or love, or pain, and it defines you for that brief moment, but it’s all nebulous and temporary, and the rest of the time, you’re… poured out. There’s nothing permanent in there, to tell you who you really are or what you really want.”  
  
“If I do, I don’t see the point in dwelling. I just focus on what I have to do next. Which, right now, is the laundry. D'you want anything doing? To bring your sheets down?”  
  
Iriel ignored her question, staring out of the window. “I think… what I have to do next… is what Vivec did, after the Pomegranate Banquet. I must hunt down and murder my children.”  
  
She gave him an odd look. “I hope that one’sa metaphor.”  
  
He smiled unconvincingly at her, over the laundry basket. “Yes, me too.”  
  
When she kept looking at him, he added, “Sorry, I know I’m being terribly pretentious, but it’s helping to keep me motivated. Providing something to echo around the vessel. I suppose I mean that I’m trying to fix my mistakes. It’s so hard to tell if my attempts to impersonate someone less shitty are remotely beneficial to anyone, but… even if they were, it wouldn’t help the people I’ve already hurt. But neither will dwelling. I have to stop thinking and do something.”   
  
He put the basket on the bar and leaned his elbows on it as Muriel fished around underneath. “I think I should have been learning from you, as much as from Erer or Helende. Perhaps more.”  
  
Her face was hidden in the cupboard, a slight echo to her voice as she replied: “Might be you already have been. Some people spend their whole lives trying to empty themselves. It’s a sacred state, they say. Acting for the sake o’ the action, without thought, emotion, or desire for any result in particular. That’s part o’ the Code of Mephala. That’s what they mean when they say Mephala has black hands.”  
  
Her head emerged, pink-cheeked and tousled. “So she better keep her spidery fingers off my white linen tablecloth. If you really want to learn from me, bring that basket down to the boiler-room. You think you’re an expert at making things vanish, but you’ve not seen the stains Cel brings home on his vest.”   
  
  
Later, alone in his room, Iriel broke the seal on the parchment and read the single name, written within. He squeaked out loud, and had to sit down on the bed until he’d stopped laughing.  
  
_If I’m planning to murder my children, then I may find a weapon in Mzuleft._


	134. depths

One afternoon, just over a week later, Iriel opened the door to Sorkvild’s tower and peered out. Julan was standing on a rock a short distance away, facing the ocean. He was looking down into the water at something, and after a moment’s hesitation, Iriel went over to see what.  
  
It turned out to be dreugh. Two of them, treading water just beneath the surface. Or whatever you called treading water, when the lower half of your body was a mass of vicious, slithering tentacles.  
  
Julan didn’t turn, but when Ire’s reflection appeared next to his own, he said, “You ever fought a dreugh? Seen one up close like this before?”  
  
“No.”

“I guess there must be a pretty sharp dropoff below this rock. This close to shore, you usually only get slaughterfish and gillyminnows and things. But look who’s here!” He waved cheerfully at the four void-black eyes locked onto him. “Normally, you have to go further out to get anything this nasty. Dreugh, marrow-pike, other stuff with tentacles and spikes and teeth where teeth shouldn’t be. The things that’ll take your fishing line and use it to catch  _you_ , drag you down and smash your head on the rocks, or squeeze the air out of you. A dreugh’ll kill a child easily, given a chance, and I’ve seen grown men get taken unaware.”  
  
Iriel shuddered. “What are they doing? They can’t get out of the water, can they?”  
  
“No, not this kind. I don’t know what they want. Maybe they’ve seen my cuirass, and think I’m one of them. Or else they’re trying to work out which one of their friends it used to be. Depends how smart you think they are, really.”  
  
Ire darted him a sideways glance. “They’re not sentient, are they? Able to think rationally, I mean.” Despite his revulsion, he examined the dreugh’s faces. Their features were so close to humanoid that it was all the more upsetting, the way their lips stretched wide around hundreds of needle-sharp teeth.  
  
Julan leaned out over the water, mouth twisting sceptically. “They’re not dumb beasts, I’ll give them that. Look at those eyes, there’s something going on in there, all right. I’ve fought them a couple of times, and you can tell, they know what they’re doing. It’s not pure instinct, and it’s not about food either. They just… hate us. And the deeper the water, the bigger the dreugh. Some people think they’ve got whole cities down there in the depths, with slime covered castles, and a king the size of a Telvanni tower, who’s never seen the sun. At least…” he raised an eyebrow, grinning, “…not  _yet_.”  
  
“Really.” Iriel wasn’t playing along. “And what do you think?”  
  
“I think I once saw a dreugh get its head stuck in a pail, and it couldn’t get out, couldn’t figure out how to go backwards. They’re not that smart. I don’t think they’re building any castles down there. What I  _do_  know is that the deeper you go, the weirder shit gets, and I’d rather eat my left arm than go down far enough to check. I hate swimming underwater at the best of times. The last thing I need’s some blood-curdling horror rising before me out of the darkness, dragging me to a horrible fate.” He straightened up, and turned away from the ocean with a shrug. “I can get that at home.”  
  
Taking hurried steps away from the water’s edge, Iriel surveyed his visitor properly. Julan looked well. Underweight, perhaps, hollow in the cheeks, but sharp and alert, hair more or less tied back. Armour still a second-hand mish-mash of styles, but clean and in good repair. The pommel of his glass longsword glinted above a banded leather and steel scabbard on his belt. “D'you like it?” he said, seeing the direction of Ire’s gaze. “I made it myself! Nash showed me how the Orcs do it.”  
  
“How long have you been waiting here?” Iriel asked. “You should have knocked, I had no idea you’d arrived.”  
  
“I didn’t expect you to be  _in_  there. Wasn’t it a necromancer’s den, full of skeletons?”  
  
“Yes, but I got rid of the worst remnants with a mixture of Calm spells and telekinesis.” Ire was hit with the queasy suspicion that hastily disposing of the bones into the sea might have been what attracted the dreugh. He pushed the thought aside. “It’s really not too bad, now. And the place’s reputation is a blessing. Provided I don’t go near the village, I doubt anyone will come and check if anyone’s here at all. Still, I won’t push my luck. I’m ready to leave, if you are. Let me get my things.”  
  
“Hang on.” Julan was serious now, frowning. “I mean… what’s this all about?” His voice was superficially confident, but with a wary uncertainty coiling and tangling beneath the surface. “Because all my friends told me I’m crazy to be doing this.”  
  
“Doing what, exactly? I thought you didn’t know.”  
  
“Seeing you again.”  
  
“Yes, my friends told me that, too.” Ire folded his hands behind his back. “But I still have to get into Mzuleft, and I need armed assistance.”  
  
“You said this was a paid job.”  
  
“It is. Standard mercenary rates.”  
  
“Then you have money, and could hire a real merc, if you wanted to.”  
  
“Two reasons.” He’d predicted this interrogation, and prepared carefully: the breezily professional tone, the no-nonsense posture, upright but not tensed. “The first is that I don’t want to deal with a stranger.”  
  
“Summon something, why don’t you. Something you wouldn’t have to talk to. Something not…  _sentient_.”  
  
“The second,” Ire said, ignoring his comment, “is to give you options for the future. I told you I wouldn’t stand in the way of your mission, and I meant it. All I ask is that you don’t choose it because you think it’s the only route open to you. No more of that ‘if I’m not this, I’m not anything’ talk. You do this job for me, I’ll pay you a daily rate, plus bonuses for assistance above and beyond the call of duty, and half of any non-research-related treasure we find. But, more importantly, I’ll write you a comprehensive reference you can use to get more work. Sign on with a trading company, or a Great House. Whatever you want.”  
  
Julan’s eyes flared. “You think I’d abandon my destiny and my people for  _that?_ ”  
  
“No, my point is you can do both! Nerevar himself started as a caravan guard, you know. Take jobs to keep yourself fed, trained and out of the gutters while you plot your next course of action. It’s not all or nothing, Julan. I have no idea if what you want to do is possible, but I know it isn’t possible the way you’ve been going about it, with no thought, preparation or planning. Devote your life to whatever you want, but stop trying to throw it away.”  
  
Slow, jaw-grinding silence. Then: “You’re still doing this. Charity work. Why?”  
  
“Because whether I should or not, I feel responsible for you. I want to discharge that responsibility, so I can leave it behind and get on with my life.”  
  
“…Fine,” Julan said, at length. His eyes hinted at a multitude of other responses, crushed and rejected one by one before they reached his lips. “Let’s get this over with, then.”  
  



	135. sentient

Mzuleft was in the centre of Sheogorad island. There, in a volcanic, mountain-ringed caldera, towers sprouted from the unstable, sulphurous ground like metal mushrooms. Approach only possible from one direction, they spent the rest of that day hiking south. Largely without conversation, although as he was pulling his blade from the shimmering remains of a winged twilight, Julan said, with a strange, shifting expression: “Hey, Ire.”  
  
Iriel was squinting at the map in the last rays of the sinking sun. He looked up, instinctively suspicious. “What?”  
  
“You’ve summoned Dremora, right? In battle, to fight for you.”  
  
“It’s been known.”  
  
“Were you going to do that, if I’d refused this job?”  
  
“I don’t know. It’s conceivable.”  
  
“D'you ever summon one for sex?”

“Wh…” Iriel almost tore the map in half. “No! Of  _course_ not! I told you, I don’t know WHY that one was dressed like that when I summoned him, but I  _wasn’t_ –”  
  
“All right, calm down.” Julan was all innocent, blinking bewilderment at the explosive results of his enquiry. “I was only asking.”  
  
“Why?!”  
  
“Because of what you said about sex for money being the same as mercenary work, fighting for money.”  
  
Ire’s face became the merciless, gold-over-steel of an Ordinator’s helm. “Where are you going with this?”  
  
Julan sheathed his sword with practised nonchalance. “Nowhere, really. Just seems by your logic, if you were OK with summoning a Daedra for fighting, you’d be OK with summoning one for sex. If they’re the same.”  
  
“I never said the  _acts_ were the same. The consent issues are… totally different, and I…”  
  
“How are they?”  
  
“Why all this sudden interest in–”  
  
“How is asking someone to fight for you all that different from asking them to fuck you? You seemed to think it was equally meaningless.”  
  
“You tell me,” spat Iriel, barrelling through Julan’s disingenuous attempts at sophistry. “You fought for me  _and_ fucked me.”  
  
“I’m still fighting for you,” Julan replied mildly. In demonstration, he tilted the pommel of his sword towards Ire, who flinched away. “And I asked what  _you_ thought.”  
  
Iriel glared pure, undiluted hatred at him for several seconds. “Fine,” he said, with icy reserve. “The general principles may be the same, whether for summoned beings or… anyone else, but the acts are still different, and I do not consider them remotely equivalent.” He swivelled stiffly on his heel and stalked away.  
  
  
An hour of brisk walking blunted the edge of Iriel’s temper, but he was still ruminating on the issues involved. After frowning in silence for some time, darting his tongue pensively in and out the gap where his left canine used to be, he finally said to Julan: “For your information, I think consent is necessary for any act you might summon a Daedra for, but what I question is whether summoned beings can  _give_ consent. They tell you in lectures it’s a pure battle of wills, of sustained mental domination. In which case, I’ve been doing it completely wrong, and the only Dremora I ever successfully summoned gave me what amounted to a… a  _pity-fight_. Ugh, I hate summoning. It’s awful on so many levels.” He set his jaw, suddenly resolute. “I’m going to stop doing it entirely.”

Julan, still unrepentant over the success of his wanton provocation, smirked. “Then you’ll have no choice but to interact with normal people, like me!”  
  
“Julan.” Ire’s stare was deader than any Dwarf. “You’re not normal people.”  
  
Another infuriating smile. “Is that a compliment?”  
  
Iriel pushed his fingers into his hairline, a headache bearing down on him. “I don’t know.”  
  
  
By the time it was dark, rain-clouds had congregated, as they tended to do in Sheogorad, if you took your eyes off the sky for more than ten seconds. Or, come to that, if you didn’t. They found an ancestral tomb just off the path. Neither of them wanted to interfere with the tomb proper, but it was agreed that camping in the antechamber would be better than getting wet. While Julan lit the torches, Iriel cast a barrage of lock and firetrap spells on the inner door of the tomb.  
  
Next, Julan watched in incredulous silence, arms folded, as Iriel unrolled his bedroll in the farthest possible corner of the tomb, hidden behind a decorative stone plinth. “What’re you hiding back there, for?” He walked around the plinth to find Iriel already under his blanket, rifling through his bag. “Don’t you want anything to eat? I could–”  
  
At his approach, Ire’s limbs retracted beneath the blanket, clutching it to his face until only his eyes were visible. “I’ll eat in the morning,” he said firmly. “Right now, I want to sleep, and I’d appreciate some privacy.”  
  
Julan rubbed his neck. “Is all this really necessary? I  _have_  seen you na–”  
  
“I’m here as your employer, and you need to learn some professionalism.”  
  
“Professionalism.”  
  
“Yes. Or I won’t be able to write you a good reference, will I?”  
  
“I don’t give a blighted scrib about the reference!” Julan sighed and held up his hands. “But have it your way. Let me know if you change your mind about food.”   
  
As Julan took his bedroll to the other side of the tomb, Iriel’s head emerged from behind the plinth. “Speaking of professionalism, we should discuss strategies in Mzuleft. I assume you’ve prepared for fighting Dwemer automata?”  
  
“I can handle the robots.”  
  
“And you remember what I need you to do, to aid my research?”  
  
“Disable the limbs, but try not to damage the core, especially on the huge man-shaped ones.”  
  
“The steam centurions, yes. And no fire spells anywhere there might be books or papers.”  
  
“I know, I know. I haven’t forgotten.” Huffing to himself, Julan sat down on his bedroll and began taking things from his bag. A few minutes later, he was cleaning his sword, a piece of nix-jerky sticking out of his mouth.  
  
Iriel sat up again. “Did you hear something?” he demanded, eyes on the inner door.  
  
Julan shrugged. “It’s a tomb, Iya. You know what’s in there. They can’t get out, so cast Silence if it’s bothering you.” He chewed on the jerky. Iriel settled for the inside of his cheek.  
  
“Hey, Ire.” Just as Julan spoke, something rattled the inner door again, and Iriel started, wringing his blanket in his hands. “What?!”  
  
“Those Dwemer man-machines. Would you fuck one?”  
  
“WHAT?!!”  
  
“Would you fuck one of those big steam robot things?”  
  
“Why do you keep asking me these horrible, invasive, inappropriate questions?!”  
  
“I notice you’re not saying no.”  
  
“NO! There, now I’m saying it! No! N-O, no!”  
  
“Really? You’ve always been very intere–”  
  
“What in Oblivion is wrong with you?!”  
  
“I just thought it might be less complicated than summoning, what with them being machines, and not sentient. No awkward consent issues, no–”  
  
“I’m not having this conversation! On no plane of existence am I having this conversation with you! Do I have to pay you extra to get you to shut up?”  
  
“I never wanted you to pay me anything in the first place. You insisted.”  
  
A muffled moan from the tomb caused Iriel to abandon any attempt to reply, and he vanished under his blanket again.  
  
  
“D'you figure out how they worked yet? The robots.”  
  
Ire had fully intended to ignore anything else Julan said to him that night, and possibly ever, but this was an appeal to his research. “Automata,” came his muffled correction. “And I’m getting closer to an answer. Soul gems, partly. Partly some strange connection to the island I haven’t identified, but I suspect the Heart of Lorkhan might be involved.”  
  
“If they’re powered by souls, could that mean they’re sentient?”  
  
“I… oh gods. I don’t know. They don’t respond to sound, but… they certainly have some spatial awareness, and can detect visible intruders, so…”  
  
“Aw, too bad. You’ll have to find a way to ask for consent. Hand signals?”  
  
“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU BLISTERING DICKWORM OR I WILL–”  
  
“OK, OK…”  
  
  
Iriel had refused to let him put out the torches, but Julan was trying to sleep. He was still trying, when Iriel’s voice crept from the corner like an injured weasel. Small and bruised, but still liable to get bitey.  
  
“Why… wh… what makes you think I’d want to… why… why do you think something being non-sentient, or avoiding issues of consent would be preferable to me? I… it’s absolutely none of your business, but… I just… I don’t understand why you would say that.”  
  
“Seems like you prefer keeping things simple, these days.”  
  
“Explain.”  
  
“Avoiding the relationship part. Like that Nord guy in Dago–”  
  
Ire sat bolt upright, eyes blazing. “OH, IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT???”  
  
“No, look, like you said, it’s none of my business! And I’m sorry. I was drunk, jealous and I lost it. And I want you to know, it won’t happen again. It’s your life, and you can fuck whatever you want.”  
  
“Agreed, so let’s drop it and go to sleep.”  
  
“Even if it’s non-sentient shambling hulks who can’t say no.”  
  
“Don’t say it, you shitbag–”  
  
“Like Nords.”  
  
Unfortunately for Iriel, he missed the chance to rip Julan’s throat out, because at that moment, a ravenous vampire smashed its way out of the inner door in an explosion of splinters and magical flame, intent on doing it for him.


	136. mortification

“Ire.” Julan’s voice came from the opposite side of the tomb, where he was pressing himself against the wall hard enough to dent the stonework. “For Boethiah’s sake! Stop poking her!”  
  
Iriel, crouched on the ground next to the Bosmeri woman’s still body, continued to peer at the veins in her limp wrist. “I’m simply trying to understand her condition. Was she really undead, or merely diseased?”  
  
“She was a vampire!!!”  
  
“What does that mean, though? She didn’t look dead.”  
  
“She’s dead NOW! I hope…”  
  
“True, if she wasn’t dead when you swung your sword through her neck, she certainly was when you kicked her head against the wall, and screamed like a cliff-racer when it bounced back at you.” He frowned. “Where did that go, by the way?”  
  
“Behind the plinth, but by all the gods please don’t, just leave it, stop messing with her, even if it IS a disease, she could be contagious!”  
  
“I’m an Altmer, we’re resistant to such impurities of the blood.”  
  
“I thought you said you were lowblood!”

Iriel looked up, his amber eyes owlish and luminous in the torchlight as he tucked his hair behind his ears.“Not to get all Altmeri supremacist on you, but that’s still considerably purer than most. Whether it’s a good thing is debatable. ‘Pure’ is a very loaded term, especially when our extreme sensitivity to magicka is rather a mixed blessing… but the fact remains I’m not affected by most blood-borne diseases. If you’re worried about yourself, take a potion. They’re in my bag… wait, actually, don’t touch it, I’ll get one for you.”  
  
Julan sucked another reluctant lungful of contaminated air through clenched teeth. “Look, whatever, just… leave her alone! Let’s get out of here and find somewhere else to camp! Anywhere but here, I’ll sleep under a mushroom if I have to, but let’s GO.”  
  
Ire stood up, wiping his hands on his shirt. “Oh, all right.”  
  
  
  
Continuing towards Mzuleft the next morning, Iriel kept squinting and shielding his eyes, though the sun was barely visible through the clouds. Julan noticed, and frowned. “Are you OK?”   
  
“I’m fine, it’s just rather bright.”  
  
“It’s really not. Are you–” He broke off, as Ire staggered to a halt, pale and glassy-eyed. Abruptly, he vomited, veered sideways, and collapsed onto Julan, fortunately for Julan, in that order.  
  
  
  
“Oh, do calm down.” Iriel’s voice was muffled, because he was sitting on the ground with his head between his knees. “Of course I’m not going to turn into a vampire. That’s honestly not the problem, I’m just… sleep-deprived. After all the fuss last night, I never got a chance to rest properly, and it’s hitting me a little hard, that’s all.”  
  
Julan was still pacing frantically. “Iya, this is far more than a bad night’s sleep!”  
  
“I admit, this looks extreme, but it’s… really not what you think. There’s no need to worry.”  
  
“How can you be so sure? Let me see your eyes again.”  
  
“Mara’s arse, will you give it a rest? It really is a complete waste, but if it’ll shut you up, I’ll take a potion against disease.”  
  
“Good!” Julan saw Iriel’s shoulders begin to shake. “Hey… please don’t cr… wait… are you laughing?”  
  
Ire looked up with a ghoulish grin. “I was just thinking,” he slurred, sounding a touch delirious. “If I were a vampire, I wouldn’t be able to talk to people, because they’d run, or try to kill me. I couldn’t even go out in daylight. I’d have to stay indoors all the time, hiding from everyone, withdrawing completely from civilisation.”  
  
“That sounds a lot like what you do anyway.”  
  
“Yes! So if I were a vampire, I wouldn’t need to feel guilty about it!”  
  
“Iriel.” Julan’s eyes widened at the dreamy look on Ire’s face. “I am not letting yoube a vampire.”  
  
“It’d be so interesting, from a research perspective, though! And I could make endless terrible jokes about sucking on people!”  
  
“Gah… Iya, you are drinking a cure potion right now, if I have to hold you down and force-feed you!”  
  
Fortunately, such measures proved unnecessary, and Julan relaxed slightly once he could see Iriel was actually drinking the potion. By the time the flask was empty, Julan was, in fact, suppressing a smirk. Iriel, less light-headed now, sighed. “What’s so funny?”  
  
“I’m imagining what you’d really be like, as a vampire. What would you do, sidle up to people in dark libraries, flash them your one fang, and ask if they wanted their secks nucking?”  
  
“Wh… ” Ire blinked, and gripped the flask. “Oh my gods. How extremely fucking dare you. As your employer, I order you to go and throw yourself into the sea. But first pass me another of those potions, just to be sure.”  
  
After some more rest, and a meal (mostly composed of various greens, Julan uncharacteristically reluctant to cook fresh meat, for some reason) Ire was somewhat improved, though still weak-legged and wobbly. Julan had begun pacing again, shooting him increasingly concerned glances. “How are you feeling now? That was our last potion, so if this isn’t enough…”  
  
“I feel a lot better, really. My eyes still hurt, though.”  
  
“I’m sorry I teased you, please don’t die. Or be a vampire.”  
  
“I’m not! Honestly, I’m not. I need another moment before I stand up, that’s all.”  
  
“I’m sorry I’ve done nothing but aggravate you on this trip, I just…” Julan trailed off in wordless frustration.  
  
Ire stopped massaging his brow and regarded him seriously. “You hate being hired help. I know. You think it’s an insult your integrity, but it’s not. You’ve just been indoctrinated never to expect anything in return for your efforts, but you deserve better. If anything, I was insulting you before. Taking advantage of your assistance, in exchange for largely empty promises of training. I could have got you killed a dozen times, and for what?”  
  
“For friendship!” Julan had that kicked puppy expression again, and Iriel looked away.  
  
“It’s different now,” he said. “Your time and skills are getting proper financial reimbursement.”  
  
“I know which I preferred,” muttered Julan. Then he shook off the self-pity, forcing a lighter tone and the grim edge of a smile. “Aaaand I also know whose fault it is I lost that option. I’ll stop messing with you from now on, I swear.” He rolled his eyes. “Be a fucking  _professional_.”  
  
Ire nodded. “It’s better this way,” he said. “It’s fairer. Really.” He got to his feet, waving Julan away when he moved to support him. “No need, I’m fine. Let’s go. We should still be able to reach the ruin by tomorrow.”  
  
  
  
_All the work I’ve done to get here has been a complete waste of time._  
  
The hollow feeling inside Iriel intensified with every new empty chamber he walked into, as if the ruin were infecting him with its essence. Cursed, dangerous and forbidden, they’d said. But in person, Mzuleft was bleak, desolate, and utterly worthless, and Iriel knew exactly how it felt.  
  
_I’ve walked for days, studied for weeks, and researched for months. I’ve risked my life, threatened my mental stability and sabotaged my recovery. All for a few derelict rooms, full of nothing but the abandoned remains of a research station and a bandit camp._  
  
This had been the last, best, chance to find new Dwemer texts. All the other ruins on Vvardenfell had long since been picked over by the Telvanni or the Mages Guild. Mzuleft had been an exception. Long-buried, its recent excavation had been a source of endless rumours, as one by one, research teams failed to return. Now he was here, the tantalising mystery seemed depressingly obvious. A small ruin, recently vacated by a gang of murderous bandits, who had killed the researchers, and no doubt already sold any relics that had ever been here.  
  
They reached the last room. His magelight spread across bare walls, floors, tables, bandit refuse: nothing again. Ire slumped against a corroded metal workbench, and groaned. He had tried not to get his hopes up, but only now, feeling them come crashing down, did he realise just how far they had to fall.  
  
Julan was kicking at barrels, frowning. Yet another complication he could have avoided: there had been nothing moving in the entire place, be it flesh, spirit or automaton. No need for a bodyguard at all, let alone an infuriating ex with entirely too many chips on his shoulder. Julan kicked another barrel, and Ire winced. “Stop that. There’s nothing here.”  
  
“Yes there is, they’re full of ash yams.”  
  
“I’m not writing a fucking paper on ash yams, though, am I?”  
  
“I know, but these yams are weird.”  
  
“Julan, my level of interest in ash yams is sub zero. If there were a box of infinite miniscularity, my interest in ash yams would still not touch the sides. If an ant wore socks–”  
  
“Ire! Something’s not right here.”  
  
“I know that!! It’s fucking empty, and I have to go home with nothing, that’s what’s not fucking right!! I have to try and–”  
  
“Look… d'you want me to tell you what I’m thinking, or not?”  
  
“I… all right. Fine.” Ire collapsed backwards onto the desk, his decision clearly based on the absence of anything better to do.  
  
“So, you said there were researchers here first,” Julan said. “But the last people here were obviously bandits, from all the weapons. Where d'you think they all went?”  
  
“I assume the researchers were murdered by the bandits, and the bandits moved on once everything of value was plundered.”  
  
“OK, but if that’s true, then what about the ash yams?”  
  
Ire flung a hand against his forehead. “Blessed Aedra, won’t anyone think of the poor ash yams?”  
  
“There’re barrels of food under here, and it’s all recently spoiled, so it must’ve belonged to the bandits. Why didn’t they take it with them?”  
  
“I’m really not interested in the details of their house moving drama.”  
  
“OK, but behind those barrels are more barrels, with older food. More ash yams, but much more spoiled, really dried and withered, compared to the recently spoiled stuff.”  
  
“Will you stop giving me a autopsy report for the goddamn ash yams already, Sheo-fucking-gorath!”  
  
“OK, but… why didn’t the bandits eat them?”  
  
“Who are you, their fucking mother?”  
  
“The older stuff must have been the researchers’ food. So why didn’t the bandits eat it? There’s loads, and it’s all wasted.”  
  
“Auri-El, would you stop obsessing over wastage for five minutes, I’m not in the mood.”  
  
“That’s not the point!”  
  
Ire had covered his face with his hands, so his voice came out muffled and nasal. “I don’t caaaaare what your point is, I want to go home, crawl into bed and stay there until I wither and rot like the poor unwanted ash yam that I am.”  
  
“Ire,” Julan said slowly, “listen to me. I think this camp was already deserted for long enough that the food had already spoiled by the time the bandits arrived. I don’t think the bandits killed the researchers.”  
  
Iriel sat up, blinking furiously, one hand clutching and releasing the empty air. “In that case… where…?”  
  
“I don’t know, but maybe the bandits are there, too. They left all their things. And there’s no bloodstains, no sign of any fighting here.”  
  
“Fuck.” Iriel was on his feet. “There must be more to the ruin. A concealed entrance somewhere.”  
  
“Maybe. Can you make the magelight go lower? I want to look at the tracks in the dust.”  
  
  
  
“It can’t that difficult to open it!” Iriel snarled at the pipe-laden section of wall, its complicated pattern of valves the main target of his wrath. “Because if those drooling gutter-gets from the Mages Guild, not to mention a bunch of fucking  _bandits_  got in there, so can I.”  
  
“You’re very smart,” agreed Julan, peaceably. He was leaning against the wall, cleaning his nails with a lockpick.  
  
Ire sighed. “You don’t have to make fun of me.”  
  
“I’m not! You know all this stuff about the Dwemer, and lots of other important subjects. I only know about simple things. Ash yams and dust. That’s about my level.” He smirked, still examining his nails.  
  
Iriel exhaled sharply through his teeth. “All right. I apologise. You were right, and I didn’t listen. I’m an arrogant elitist dick, a shit-for-brains idiot. Make as much fun of me as you like, I deserve it.”  
  
“You were frustrated. I get it. And you  _are_  very smart, and you’ll figure out this door.”  
  
“I  _will_.”  
  
And he did, and the wall slid aside in a smooth, silent motion of hidden gears. And he beamed at Julan, eyes full of magelight and dark reflections from the pitch black empty space yawning beyond the door.  
  
Julan gazed back, affection and regret mingling on his face as the lockpick slipped through his fingers. “Iya… I…” he sighed and bent to retrieve the pick, “…never mind.”  
  
“Are you all right?” Ire looked dubious. “Listen, I know I said I was hiring you, but you don’t have to come in here with me. None of the others were ever seen again, so I completely understand that whatever money I’m paying you isn’t enough to risk–”  
  
Julan’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course I’m coming! I wasn’t… I mean… I’m not scared. And this was never about the money. Anyway,” he flashed a quick half-smile, “we’ll be fine. You’re much smarter than all those others. Right?”


	137. still

*Shhhhhhhhffffffffff*  
*CRRNNNNCH!!!*  
“Gah!”  
  
“You closed the door! I told you to prop it open! Intervention spells aren’t working here. Either we’re too far from the mainland networks, or something’s interfering with the arcane harmonics.”  
  
“I did prop it! With a barrel of ash yams, but when I turned round, it closed anyway, and crushed it!”  
  
“I see. Would you like a moment of silence for the ash yams?”  
  
“No, but maybe we should have one for _those_ guys.”  
  
“For…? …Oh. Do you think they were bandits or researchers?”  
  
“Some of each, I’d say. And none of them able to reopen this door.”  
  
“Then we stick to the plan, and continue. This can’t be the only entrance.”

 _The magelight tints the gold metal of the tunnels an ectoplasmic green. My hands have contracted the same eerie colour_. _His grey skin has turned murky and swampish, the red in his eyes leached to amber. Are they the same shade as mine, now? Or are mine discoloured past the point of resemblance? I no longer know what he sees, when he looks at me._  
  
_Which is not, unfortunately, to say that I don’t know the look._  
  
_We descend. Through narrow hallways, engraved with long strings of characters that I have enough Dwemeris to recognise as numeric, but not enough to identify their significance. A week I spent alone in that blighted bonefucker’s tower, and I failed to achieve anything I set out to do there. Right now, I need to be clawing back progress, gathering data. Instead, I’m paralysed by my own hubris. I’m not ready. I’ve taken on far more than I’m capable of managing safely. I summoned him here, convincing myself I was doing him some sort of favour, but nothing about this can possibly end well._  
  
_We don’t need the magelight any more. There are lamps in the walls here, small and gently pulsing, somehow still powered. I preferred the magelight. If I kept it on my right, high and far enough, I didn’t have to see his face. He’s not speaking, which is wise of him, but he’s never been much for wisdom. Not for long. I know what’s coming, there’s no escape, down here, and anticipation wraps round my chest like a chain, every breath tightening._  
  
_I wish it were cold. Cold would make sense in this dead, timeless place. There should be frozen silence and still contemplation. Instead, we have churning gears, harsh and unceasing, throaty rumbles that shake up through the floor and constant, rising, heat._  
  
“Careful. There’s a centurion sphere in that side-tunnel. Pretty sure it’s already broken, but I’ve got my eye on it. You want to check it for anything useful?”  
  
“No.”  
  
_Stillness is the key. Coldness and stillness. Mephalan emptiness, focusing on the task before you, regardless of emotion or outcome, spiders spinning webs the moment they emerge from the egg, untaught and automatic. How to survive this world, or any prison. Unperson yourself, machinise yourself, and you can step outside time._  
  
_I was never any good at it._  
  
_Take my fickle skin and rebuild me of senseless, echoing brass. De-create me, forge a clockwork simulacrum of my fool’s-gold flesh. Enumerate my functions, show me the logic dictated by my blueprint. Provide me with safe limits to my sentience, blind to the light in his eyes, deaf to the unwise words I see lining up behind them._  
  
“I missed this.”  
“Wandering aimlessly in the dark, waiting for something horrible to happen?”  
“With you.”  
“An apt metaphor for our relationship.”  
  
_Why is he so keen to excavate our ruin? To restart a broken mechanism, watch the same vicious array of cogs chew us up all over again? Is it his horror of waste, his dogged insistence that everything be salvageable? Let mangled things rest._  
  
_But this is a tomb without rest or peace, filled with their undead machines. A tomb without bones, lacking all trace of their bodies. A tomb without names, no clues to their identities or connections. Is this what they wanted, for their epitaph? This eternal noise and motion, producing… what? What did they want to achieve?_  
  
_Time, so much time, aeons passing everywhere but here. The weight of it presses in from the outside, but cannot penetrate. Instead, the darkness, clamour and heat penetrate us as we stumble forwards_ _, what we can only hope is forwards, blind in all directions, unsealing things left sealed, unsettling the settled dust._  
  
_A huge round room, large as a Vivec canton, the only way forwards a long metal walkway extending through the centre, over an echoing black nothing. Almost across, and I realise he’s stopped half-way. The pit throws back his words to me, as if the reinforcement makes it better, as if having me wait for this moment after hours of walking in cacophonous silence makes it any easier to bear._  
  
“I still love you.”  
“I know. It’ll pass.”  
  
“I don’t want it to.”  
“That’ll pass, too.”  
  
_If we die here, if our bodies are the next to collapse forever in these endless tunnels, what evidence of ourselves will we leave? What would they assume, from our bodies? Researcher and mercenary? Probably. Friends? Possibly. Lovers? No, they’d never think that. They’d call us brothers, first._  
  
_Does it matter to me, which they’d assume? Why?_  
  
“How do you know? That it’ll pass.”  
  
“Because it’s not love. It’s someone being so alone and desperate for contact that they invest disproportionate amounts of emotion in the first person who pays them the slightest attention. You don’t know me. Not really. I thought you’d figured _that_ one out already. And let’s face it… beyond these bizarre circumstances throwing us together… we have nothing in common.”  
  
“I wouldn’t want to be with someone I had a lot in common with. I don’t think I’d like them very much.”  
  
“…Gods, me neither.”  
  
_Did it happen all at once? Did they die together, instantly, split-second, one great calamity? Or was it more gradual, one after another, or by degrees, watching loved ones vanish and fade, be it in pitiful sorrow or noble sacrifice? No, not loved ones. They knew nothing of love. According to Vivec, anyway, but his version of love is a twisted mirror, self-regarding and strange._  
  
“You know, some people say you can’t truly love someone else until you’ve learned to love yourself.”  
  
“What?! That’s horrible. Who in Oblivion says that?!”  
  
“Sadists, masquerading as sages.”  
  
“Sheogorath… You don’t… you don’t think it’s true, do you?”  
  
“We can only hope not, or we’re even more screwed than we thought.”  
  
_What is this ruin-machine for? If all this was one system, one metal mind, twining like buried nerves beneath the skin of Vvardenfell… what was the final output? Did they succeed or fail? With the last page missing, is this a triumph or a tragedy? A farce? How can I hope to write that page, if I don’t even know the correct tonal register?_  
  
_Things don’t have to last forever, to matter. But if they leave no evidence of themselves, for others, who will they matter to? Will they matter for the right reasons? What would the Dwemer think of my research, would they laugh at me? Did they even laugh?_  
  
“Iya, it’s _not_ true. I _know_ it’s not, because–”  
  
“Please stop now. I want to get this project done, for my own self-respect, if nothing else, and then I only want to leave. Go far away, I don’t know where. Summerset’s clearly out, and I don’t think Cyrodiil would be the same to me, now. Perhaps I’ll pick a ship at random. At any rate, I’ll be gone, and you’ll have the freedom to decide what to do with your life.”  
  
_Both of us came down here chasing something long-since vanished into dust. Which of us is the bigger fool, I wonder? Which the more hopeless romantic? How much deeper must we go until we find out?_  
  
_What difference does the nature of the ending make, now that it’s over? They are dead, or at any rate, gone. Outside the blueprint, beyond their own logic, escaping the compromise. Severing every last binding, cutting themselves from Mundus’ womb with cornered spheres. Was it their ignorance of love that taught them how?_  
  
_I wish they would teach me._


	138. energy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't [this a great soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLDgHkvhmTg&t=78s) for Dwemer ruin chapters?

There was power here, Iriel could feel it. Beyond the metal walls, beneath the dully echoing floors. A compulsive tug at the edge of his consciousness, luring him onwards. A glimmering thread of arcane awareness, telling him which tunnel to follow, whenever they came to a junction.  
  
It was dangerous. Even if his magical senses hadn’t been warning him, they’d begun stumbling over the bodies of researchers and bandits again. In various degrees of decomposition, but from what little Iriel could tell from the unmarked corpses… they hadn’t died of hunger. Whatever had happened, it had been a lot faster than that.

They descended. Along tunnels where, more and more, all Ire’s senses pulsed with the beat of a mysterious force. But beat and pulse were the wrong words: this was neither conscious rhythm, nor unconscious flesh. This was automatic, yet not machine; magical, yet not living. Free from desire, but calling. Julan, less attuned to these things, nevertheless felt it too, and they moved forwards in silent synchronisation. Every so often, they passed another corpse, but neither of them suggested stopping.  
  
It was a crystal. Colossal in size, purple-white, and veined with glowing strands of magicka. It jutted up through the floor of the large, square chamber, extending still deeper into the earth below, impossible to tell how far. It was surrounded by a collar-like structure, ringed with slender metal rods that made delicate contact with the crystal, like an insect’s probing antennae.  
  
Ire’s eyes had been fixed on it from the moment he saw it, and he walked forwards, as if in a trance. “It’s anuic psychelite,” he breathed. “I’ve never seen so much in my life.”  
  
Julan was looking at the rest of the room. It was strewn with yet more bodies: human, elven, beastfolk. Suddenly, he recoiled. “There’s a dead Daedroth in here! It hasn’t returned to Oblivion, its actual corpse is still here!” He peered at the scaly green body in horrified fascination, then turned to Iriel, who was still mesmerised by the crystal. “What happened here? Is it a machine? What’s it for? What did you call it, just now?”  
  
“Anuic psychelite. The mineral that soul gems are made from. It preserves soul energy in its purest, most lossless form.” Ire reached out and touched the crystal, a vital potency fizzing through his fingertips. The pulse within his brain increased. There was a suction to it now, a feeling of small whirlpools, merging and quickening.  
  
“It’s a soul gem?” Julan’s mouth fell slack, staring at it. “Is there anything in it?”  
  
“Yes,” said Ire, in a wavering tone.  
  
“What? Can you sense it?”  
  
“Not precisely, it’s just energy, at this point. But there’s too much of it to be just one soul!”  
  
“Are they Dwemer souls?!”  
  
Ire bit his lip, his face a mask of concentration. “No. I don’t think so. I can’t tell details, but… The energy here is too recently absorbed to be the Dwemer. And some of it resonates… differently. A small amount of the energy I can detect is… definitely Padomaic. Daedric. I… I think that Daedroth is in here. It’s all one swirling ocean now, but some eddies feel more…” He pulled his hand away, eyes filled with horror. “It’s  _their_  souls. The people here. All of them.”  
  
“Wha…? But soul gems can’t trap people, can they? And even for an animal, don’t you need it to be under a spell?”  
  
“That’s what I’ve always been taught, but…” The pull inside his head was growing stronger. Between one thought and the next, he felt something beginning to tear. “Julan, we need to get out of here. Now.”  
  
Mindful of the trail of corpses behind them, they chose onward, inward, downward. They ran, physically free, but mentally dragged backwards, fighting a constant current. If his mind was a sink full of water, then Iriel was trying to hold down the plug as something else struggled to remove it and send his contents swirling and draining away. Beside him, Julan staggered, stumbled. Ire grabbed his wrist and yanked him around yet another corner.  
  
It was a dead end. The pulse was rising in frequency, swelling and mounting to a climax. Ire fell to his knees, overcome by the psychic vortex. It was over. He raised his head, seeking Julan, a last look, a wordless apology. Saw him, face contorted, dragging a grille from the floor, and throwing it aside. As Iriel’s vision began to vibrate in and out with the heightening whine of the crystal, Julan seized him by the shoulders and shoved him, head first, into the hole.  
  
  
He fell through darkness, twisting and flailing. For a tortuous, stretching moment, his soul threatened to remain hooked as his body plummeted away, then with a wrenching snap, he was released, intact. Albeit still falling to his death. His back broke through something with a bone-shaking crash, then he was falling again, but the air had changed. Now it was oily and ancient in his nostrils, chemical and stale.  
  
Dazed and soul-sprained, he barely had the magicka to cast Levitate, but ‘barely’ was enough to slow his fall. Then Julan cannoned into him from above. Every breath knocked out of him, he concentrated all his energy into the spell, extending it around them both. Pure, brutal willpower, this time, all formulas forgotten.  
  
The Earth Bones yielded to him long enough, and they landed, roughly, but without injury, on a hard, metal surface. Shaken apart by the impact, he felt Julan roll away. Gasping for stagnant air, Ire felt heat from the floor rise through his back, but it never reached the level of pain, and seconds later, his exhausted eyes fell shut.  
  
  
  
When he opened them, he was bathed in blue light. Above him were familiar, scar-threaded palms, lit pale from the streams of healing magic they were sending into his chest. Feeling it spread through him, caressing each nerve, Iriel hesitated. He was horribly tempted to close his eyes again, allow himself to relax into the sea-like embrace of it, this unconditional flood of tenderness.  _Some things, he doesn’t seem to mind wasting_.  
  
Julan’s hands were inches away. A worse temptation slunk into his mind.  _how long since someone touched you? touched your skin as if they loved you? you know… with the gentlest of alteration magics, you could move his hand so subtly he’d think he was doing it himself. that it was his fault not yours. and then when–_    
  
Horror stricken, he sat up, pushing Julan’s hands away, politely but firmly. “I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”  
  
“Just wanted to be sure.” Cross-legged in the steam-tinged shadows, Julan sounded haggard, but made a stab at casual. “You wanted me to be your bodyguard, so I’m guarding your body.”  
  
Ire drew a shaky breath. “Never mind my body, I think you saved my soul up there.”  
  
“All for nothing, if you hadn’t broken our fall.” His teeth flashed in the gloom: a weak grin. “Like I said, I missed this. We always did work well together.”  
  
Iriel stood up, expecting a struggle, but finding himself with more stamina than he’d expected. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he could see a tunnel opening in the far wall, outlined in dim red radiance. “Say that when we get out of here alive.”  
  
“When you leave, and I never see you again, you mean?”  
  
“Don’t start that. Come on.”  
  
  
They were in so deep there was molten rock below them, red-raw and slow-shifting. They picked their way across square-latticed walkways, heat clawing up through their feet. When it began to get too much, Iriel cast a fire shield spell on himself, the shimmering frosted halo providing some respite.  
  
Julan shook his head when offered the same service. “I’m a Dunmer! Flame-eyed demon of the volcano, remember?” Despite his protestations, after a while, he began stowing the thicker layers of his armour in his bag.  
  
Iriel rolled his eyes when he saw him fingering the collar of his shirt.  _He’d better not take that off, the shitbag. Because the moment I complain, it’ll look like I’m bothered by it._  
  
At Iriel’s face, Julan’s mouth quirked, but he kept the shirt on.  
  
  
In endless lava-lit subterranean caverns, Iriel’s mind began to wander even darker paths. The ruin seemed to extend around him, his imagination rendering it infinite in scope and imbued with an alien and malevolent sentience.  
  
_We are invaders_. _Small and insignificant, yet arrogantly forcing ourselves into this place we have no right to, belonging to people whose lives we have no comprehension of._ _Our feet trespass on their paths, our fingers brush their inmost walls. We breathe their air, locked here since their vanished lungs expelled it._  
  
They came into metal-lined tunnels again, the tiny lights blinking sleepily from the walls at him. After a while, he was sure they were brighter, their glow more insistent. He told himself it was because they were closer to the power source, and not because the ruin was, in any sense, alert to their presence. He wasn’t very convincing.  
  
_Until we arrived, these depths were at peace. Not the quiet atrophy of the dead, but the rigid, mechanically maintained equilibrium of the never living._ _And now here we come, blundering, breaking, disturbing. Violating this perfect, timeless sanctum with our vulgar biology, our tasteless mortality._  
  
_I don’t think it likes the sensation._  
  
  
KHROOOOOM!!  
  
“Shit. What was… did we trigger something?”  
  
“The walls! They’re… RUN!!”  
  
Ceilings and floors and pipes and walls, all flashing past. No animunculi, but to Iriel, the whole ruin seemed animated, as if it had swallowed them whole and was trying to cough them out, or, failing that, absorb them, digest them. Running for his life, Ire found himself laughing, irrationally amused by the havoc and confusion he was wreaking with his mere presence.  
  
_The ruin can’t digest us because we’re not the right material. We’re flesh, not metal. Too warm, too alive, too messy. Too many hearts pounding, too much blood. It can’t understand us, our forms make no sense. It doesn’t know what these strange machines are for._  
  
Ringing with the pounding of their boots, the floor lurched, as if conspiring with the ceiling to pound them right back. The junctions appeared to contort as they got closer, engineering their passage to a final destination of the ruin’s choosing, finally tumbling them into a dark chamber, as behind them, a chaotic apparatus of scalding steam and piston-propelled metal collapsed shut at their heels.  
  
“Mara’s shitting arse, where are we now?”  
  
“I don’t know, but the door’s not there any more. Can you make another magelight?”  
  
_My blood is racing, but not with fear. I’m simply very aware of everything in my body. Everything separating me from this static, artificial place._  
  
“We’re in… a workshop of some kind.”  
  
“It looks empty, though. Just bare desks and shelves. And no other exits!”  
  
“Oh… Yes, it… rather looks that way.”  
  
“There must be a way out. I’m going to look around.”  
  
_Breath, hot and shallow in my chest. Automatic and involuntary every moment of my existence, so why is it I suddenly have to force it in and out of my body, consciously reaffirming my commitment to life with these constant gasps of dead gases? Being alive is so gloriously ridiculous._  
  
“Julan?”  
  
“All the steam makes it hard to tell, but I can’t see any more doors! Just pipes and walls and pipes and–!”  
  
“It’s all right. Try to breathe slowly, you’ll use up less air.”  
  
“LESS AIR?!”  
  
“Shhh, it’s fine. It’s all right.”  
  
_Unlike the Dwemer, for us, time is still passing. Every moment of my life, my heartbeats and breaths are counting down from some unknown number._  
  
“I don’t get how you can be so calm, when we might be trapped. You panic when you run out of tea leaves!”  
  
“Well… if we’re trapped, then everything becomes very simple. We sit in this room until the air runs out, or we succumb to hunger and thirst.”  
  
“SIMPLE?!”  
  
“Yes, simple. I can stop worrying about my actions affecting the outcome, because the ending is now a known quantity. Many of my goals are now irrelevant. Even if, later, we were to somehow locate another exit, such as, for example, a semi-concealed hatch on the back wall, I still couldn’t be blamed for the choices I made, based on the information I had available to me at the time, namely, that we were trapped.”  
  
“What in Oblivion are you talking about?! Look, I’m going to check around agai–hey!! Let go!”  
  
_What is this strange machine for? This breathing, sweating, constantly fluctuating, ridiculous machine, full of blood, heat and the shadow of death?_  
  
“Just… just… stop it, and just listen to me for a second. Assuming we are, indeed, completely trapped and doomed to die, certain things are bound to happen. Inevitably, we will slowly weaken as time passes. Stress, panic and despair are going to take an increasing toll. Probably, we’ll resort to passing the hours with horribly overwrought, mortality-induced emotional confessions. Finally, death at hand, out of sheer blind desperation for the touch of another as we slip into the dark, we’ll reach out, but be too physically debilitated to gain any comfort from–”  
  
“Hang on, there really might be something over there. Let me see–OW! Get off me, what are you–??”  
  
_…I’m not a machine. That’s the problem. I tried so hard, but I’m not. Right now, I’m not even a person. i’m a stupid animal and i only want one thing._  
  
“Julan. Look at me. I’m saying that  _IF_  we’re trapped, the only rational course of action is to skip directly to the part where we fuck. Now, while we still have the energy.”  
  
“Wh…”  
  
“I’m sorry, did you want to go and examine that hydraulic release lever on the back wall?”  
  
“…It can wait.”  
  
“Right. Plenty of time for that later.”  
  
“Yeah, I mean, we’re trapped, after all.”  
  
“Exactly. So hurry up and throw me onto that desk. Dehydration can set in very quickly.”   
  
  
  
“…Fuck!!”  
  
“Mhh…? Are you…?”  
  
“There’s a  _book_  down the back of this desk!!!”  
  
  
  
“Ire… must you?…  _now?_ ”  
  
“Just… a little bit… more… hhh… I’m so close… to translating… the title… hhh…”  
  
“I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”  
  
“Surely that can’t be true. Hey! Give it– don’t you dare throw– that’s been here for thousands of years!!”  
  
“THEN IT CAN WAIT FIVE MORE MINUTES!!”


	139. withdrawal

The magelight had faded, leaving them in almost total darkness. Only the small, lozenge-shaped lamps set into the walls of the workshop remained, their intermittent glow powered by mysterious and ancient vestigial energies.  _Or just geothermal steam power, converted somehow_ , thought Iriel dimly, watching them flicker and glitch like decaying fireflies.  
  
He found himself unwilling to renew the spell. To return to light, form, concrete existence and the compulsory progression of time and events. If he didn’t move or make a sound, everything remained suspended, nothing was real. Least of all these bodies, his or the other he held, thighs pinning hips, arms locked round the abating rise and fall of bare shoulders, hands gripping hair, mouth press–  
  
“Ire?”  
  
_fuck shit no shut up shut up_ “…yes?”

“If you dare offer me some kind of mercenary bonus pay for that, I’ll…” Fingers dug into the small of Ire’s back, sharply at first, then softening. “…I don’t know. Be very unhappy.”  
  
“Julan…” His voice sounded thin and toneless in the mechanised darkness. “Don’t ever pretend I have the slightest ability to stop you from being unhappy.”  
  
“You do, though.”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
For a while, Julan obeyed, breathing falling into synch with Ire’s. Then he began infusing chaos into stasis again.  
  
“Should we do that other thing you mentioned, now? The terrible and overtly emotional confessions?”  
  
“Let’s not, please.”  
  
“True, I’d only disappoint.” Lips pressed against his ear, and Ire knew he should pull away, but he couldn’t. “You know all mine already.” As Iriel’s attempted words fell to pieces on his tongue, Julan continued, fingers stroking up his spine, “I could do some of yours for you instead, if you like.” Julan’s voice was soft, but Iriel felt the sentence slip round his neck like a noose. “Such as… you were never working with that Telvanni mage, Demnevanni. I met him in the marketplace last week. He said he hadn’t seen you in months, was amazed to learn you’d even been in Gnisis.”  
  
Iriel’s body tensed rigid against the edge of the desk, and Julan’s arms tightened around him. “I don’t care,” he said, between kisses trailed from jaw to clavicle, as Ire stared numbly into the darkness, immobile. “I don’t care what you were doing, or why you lied. I  _know_ you. I thought I didn’t, for a while. I thought one thing being a lie meant that everything was, but I was wrong. I know you. So… whateverit is, I don’t care.”  
  
He pulled back, tried to make out Iriel’s face, shadowed and still. “I think I know part of it, though. You smell different, when you’re on it. Taste different. Sweeter, you’d expect, but it’s not.” Ire began to tremble, and Julan spoke quickly, urgently, words tripping over themselves: “Iya, it’s… it doesn’t mean that… you don’t… it’s not…” he took Ire’s face in his hands “Listen to me, you are  _anything_ but weak!”  
  
Iriel took two sharp-edged breaths that seemed to pierce him like knives, then he leaned into Julan’s neck and sobbed.  
  
  
  
“Ogrul calls it a managed withdrawal programme.” They were dressed now, cleaned up and reassembled, though Iriel’s eyes were haggard and red-rimmed in the magelight. “A way to get clean slowly, retaining more everyday functionality, with fewer debilitating side effects. Ogrul warned me though: it’s harder. I didn’t believe him, but he was right.”  
  
He shook his head, stared at his knees, next to Julan’s as they sat side by side on the desk. “I’m… not as far along as I had intended to be, by now. I had some bad days, slipped back a bit. That’s why it’s so much harder. You don’t stop using it cold, you reduce it gradually. Enough to take the edge off, but you never feel like you’ve had enough. It takes willpower. More than I have, sometimes, and then I have to start over.”  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
Ire’s jaw stiffened. “Because it’s not your problem, and I don’t want help to deal with it. I can get off it on my own this time.”  
  
“You don’t  _have_ to, though. I want to help you deal with it.”  
  
“I don’t want help.”  
  
“That Ogrul’s helping you. You mean you don’t want help from  _me_.”  
  
“Correct.” Iriel rubbed at his sore eyes, frowning. “I don’t. I went to Ogrul because he was a neutral party, a healer.” His mouth pulled tight for a moment. “My main concern was that he might know Kaye through the Imperial Cult, but he assured me of his vows of confidentiality, so hopefully I’ll be spared that additional mortification.”  
  
“When did you start again?”  
  
“The burial caverns, technically, but… it was only a single hit to get me through the pain. Not enough on its own to physically readdict me.” He sighed. “I should have had more willpower, but when I was in Gnisis, I… didn’t. Someone was selling, I was just so tired, I’d already broken my clean streak, and… fuck my excuses, honestly. I knew I had to stop, but I couldn’t face the withdrawal, I was too busy–”  
  
“Looking after me.”  
  
“Don’t you dare try and take any blame. I screwed up all by myself, which is why I need to fix it by myself. And I can, this time. The skooma I’m taking now is very diluted, mixed with certain other ingredients that simulate the high and reduce the negative effects of withdrawal. I drink it before I go to sleep, usually. The first few times, I stayed at the barracks while Ogrul monitored my dosage and reaction, but when I told him I was an alchemist, he showed me the process. After that, I could buy moon sugar in bulk from the local smugglers and refine it myself, in whatever concentration I required.” He almost smiled. “My earlier calculations were remarkably accurate, I just wasn’t using the right catalyst.”  
  
“Buying sugar in bulk? How in Oblivion were you affording everything? I was worried enough about the Tradehouse room, and all that money you left me for training.” Julan paused, carefully stripping his words of any accusatory tone before continuing. “Is there… anything else you want to tell me?”  
  
“No.” He raised a hand before Julan could speak: he wasn’t finished. “There are many things I don’t want to tell you, but I probably should anyway. Such as… I met your mother’s sister, and her family. I liked them very much, and I suspect you would, too.”  
  
“Wha… why didn’t you want to tell me that?”  
  
“Perhaps I thought your mother was right, perhaps you need to be protected from things you want, when it might be that you can’t ever have them. But I’ve already fucked  _that_  one up today, haven’t I?”  
  
“…So what else?”  
  
“You really want it all? Fine, then, here’s another. I told Cosades he could find another sucker to play hero for the Emperor, but it didn’t go as well as I hoped, and it might not be over. He’s searching for more prophecies, and he refused to release me until the Emperor agrees. I don’t know what else I can do - he’s made it clear escaping isn’t an option I’d survive.”  
  
“I see. Well… I get that you don’t have a choice. And… maybe if you find more prophecies, there’ll be something I can use, to tell me what I need to do next. They can force you to work for them, but they can’t force your loyalty. Hide in the skins of your enemies, right?”  
  
“I suppose.”  
  
“You… still didn’t say where you’ve been getting all this money.”  
  
“Oh, that.” Ire shrugged and made a vague gesture. “I’ve sort of… been dealing premium-grade skooma to half of Gnisis. Better than anything else on the market, apparently, though if the Camonna Tong find out, they’ll have yet another reason to take me swimming in the Odai with my pockets full of rocks.”  
  
He leaned his elbows on his knees and sank his head into his hands. “Gods… this is such a fucking mess. we’re both such fucking messes. But… we’re stuck like this, aren’t we? Until we can get out of here… until I can get out of this fucking country without thinking you’re going to immediately get yourself killed, or fall apart because of this ridiculous dependency I’ve allowed you to develop.”  
  
Julan sighed. “Is  _that_  what you’re telling yourself, now? Sheogorath… You’ve put me on that thing you said. Managed withdrawal. Haven’t you?”  
  
“I… I suppose… In a way. You responded so badly to getting cut off completely, I…”  
  
“Is that what you’d do, if you could? Leave Morrowind, and never see me again?”  
  
“I should. You can’t push two open wounds together and expect either one to heal right.”  
  
“But you can’t leave yet.”  
  
“…No.”  
  
“And… what just happened…”  
  
“Was a serious relapse.”  
  
“Yours or mine?”  
  
Ire slid off the table. “Excuse me, I feel a miraculous escape coming on.”   
  
Heading to the back wall, he began hauling on a wall-mounted lever. With a whirr of ancient gears, a section of wall began to move aside. He stood watching it dispassionately, arms wrapped around his chest.  
  
When the passage was open, he glanced back at Julan. “There. We’re free. As far as I’m concerned, this didn’t happen, and it’s certainly not going to happen again.”  
  
As Julan collected his things in silence, Iriel’s face darkened. “And you shouldn’t want it to! You want me to get you more prophecies, do you? Fine. Have them, have as many as you can fucking take. You’ve got some nerve, honestly, claiming to love me, when we both know you pledged yourself heart and soul to a dead Chimer warlord long ago. Your mother made the match, and mother knows best. What could you possibly want with me, when you could have Nerevar? He’s the only one who matters. What was it you said? ‘This isn’t about you or me, get over yourself’. Right?”  
  
Julan gave him a hollow stare, but swung his pack onto his shoulder again. “…Right.” Jerking his thumb towards the far corner, he added bitterly, “Don’t forget your  _book_.”  
_  
_


	140. judgement

The sky was melting through every shade of violet into a glorious mess of stars, but Iriel wasn’t looking. He was shoving Julan into the mossy shadow of a mushroom, rolled half off the bedroll, heels of his hands skidding over skin, falling forwards, caught, held, dragged down. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this. He knew it was both selfish and self-destructive. He also knew, more keenly with each passing night, that neither of them had the willpower to stop.  
  
He’d hoped it would, at least, provide closure. That succumbing to temptation one last time, while remaining nothing to be proud of, might represent a symbolic end point, after which he could truly break free of the whole horrendous mess and make a new start. He, of all people, should have known it didn’t work that way.  
  
By day, they were still hiking through the mountains of Sheogorad Island. The half-collapsed side-tunnel had emerged in a ravine, far further north of Mzuleft than the point they’d entered from. While the sun was up, they scrambled southwards between rugged rocks and frilled fungal megaflora, aiming to get back into range of the mainland Intervention networks. If they spoke, it was to exchange brief words about immediate practicalities. Certainly not to reopen discussions of which, in the cold light of day, they both knew the inevitable outcome.  
  
Once the light faded, and they found somewhere to camp, the darkness would flick some hidden switch, and soon enough, one would be in the other’s bedroll. Sometimes neither of them remembered, afterwards, who had moved first. It always began with a wordless look, a hesitation, a chance for the other to be the one to exercise wisdom and restraint. Quickly abandoned when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen tonight, either.  
  
Iriel would not, at this point, have claimed to know anything at all about love, but whatever the hell they were making, he was pretty sure it wasn’t that. A mistake, obviously. A mockery of his moral agenda for this trip, certainly. A body of evidence that ethical purity is inversely proportional to orgasm strength… well, perhaps if his sample size had been larger. Or if he could begin to separate correlation from causation. Despite his ever-expanding data set, he knew it’d never survive peer review.  
  
Ire envied people who could lose themselves completely in sex. Usually, he counted Julan among that number, but beneath him, he saw Julan’s gaze flickering towards the sky. A slight furrow appeared in his brow. Ire looked, and saw Azura’s star floating above the horizon, a distant cosmic chaperone. Growling, he threw his weight sideways, pulling Julan above him, and his attention away from the judgement of heaven.  
  
For himself, Ire rarely felt he had the excuse of being overwhelmed by his blood. His unquiet mind, never easily anaesthetised, always had processing capacity spare for certain neurotic cycles. For the creeping conviction they were being watched. For debates about whether he felt guilty, and, if he had to admit that he did not, then whether he felt guilty about not feeling guilty, wrapping each failure of conscience in yet another layer until his quota of self-shame was satisfied.  
  
He realised, after a while, where some of it was coming from, what it reminded him of. Of being in Valtir’s room, with its smell of hair oil and ink, hunting down something he’d seen in the other boy’s eyes. Which, once tracked it to its lair, proved less monstrous, but more dangerous, than he’d thought. Of the moment of Firi’s scream, itself echoing the time when, studying together, he’d elbowed a full glass of juice across the table, flooding her notes and her lap. Of how he’d gasped, anguished, “I’m so sorry, I knew that would happen if I put it there!” Wringing out her dress, she’d stared at him in devastated incomprehension - because she was thoughtful, careful Firionwe, prepared for everything (almost everything) - “But if you _knew_ it would happen, why didn’t you do anything to prevent it?” He’d had no answer for her, then or later, when she stood, spilling her star-charts in the unlocked doorway, home early from astrology class.  
  
Here, though, in the middle of desolate Sheogorad, there was nobody to spy on him but the cliff racers. No tearful Firionwe, no frowning Sapiarchs, no stern Imperial watchmen, no disgusted Redoran innkeepers. Iriel knew full well that the person he felt observing him every night, standing over him in judgement, was his own better self.  
  
And yet, when he drifted awake at dawn, the world edged with dew, and Julan breathing a slow, sedative rhythm against his chest, he couldn’t find it in him to be sorry. Couldn’t even, in those ephemeral, rose-tinged moments, recollect all the reasons he’d discarded messily around him, together with his clothes, why he should be.  
  
Until the day they came to Rotheran, and he received a more permanent reminder.


	141. free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: background rapey implications, but nothing onpage/explicit.

Julan noticed them first, and threw himself flat, dragging Iriel down with him into the wickwheat. Ire had undone Julan’s belt by the time he realised his misinterpretation, but once the confusion was resolved, they lay along the rocks, watching the small four-oared boat approach the beach.  
  
When it could be rowed no closer, one of the two Dunmer men in the stern barked something sharp and authoritarian. One by one, the rowers clambered into the waist-high water, and began pulling the boat up onto the sand. Four slaves, all Khajiit, hampered by the fact they were manacled together, bracer-to-bracer, in a dripping, miserable chain. When they could do so without dampening their fine leather boots, the Dunmer disembarked. Forming the slaves into single file, they began to drive them along an inland path to the south.

Iriel saw the grim focus in Julan’s eyes, and the tension in his shoulders and thighs. Before he could spring forward, sword flashing free, Ire flung a hand sideways, hoping to restrain him. He failed, but as Julan shot forwards, his belt came off in Iriel’s hand, sword still attached. Unable to locate his weapon, Julan stumbled to a confused halt. This gave Ire time to scuttle after him, hook an arm round his leg and cling on like an octopus.  
  
Julan glared down. “Nothing you can say is going to to stop me killing them!”  
  
“I don’t want to stop you!”  
  
“Then–”  
  
“I want to make sure we kill  _all_  of them! Which means finding out where they’re going.”  
  
“…Fine.” Julan moved to follow the slavers, and immediately clawed at his pants. Made from heavy khaki twill, their size had already caused Iriel to wonder if he had obtained them from an Orc. “Can I  _please_  have my belt back, now?”  
  
  
Their destination was a stronghold, concealed in the rocky hills. The last thing on the island, before the cliffs plunged into the sea, and Vvardenfell lay visible beyond. At the steel-reinforced main entrance on the plaza, a vacant-looking Dunmer sat sprawled on the ground, a bag of moon sugar at his elbow.  
  
The leading slaver glowered at him, unimpressed. “Delivery for Llaren Terano.”  
  
The ‘guard’ barely looked up. “Take 'em on down, then, f'lah. You know the way by now.”   
  
Cloaked in invisibility, they slipped in with the slaves. Iriel had successfully argued that, with no knowledge of what they’d face inside, their best course of action was to start with the people they hoped to rescue. Talk to them, find out what they knew about their captors, organise a plan. Without the impairment of slave bracers, Iriel hoped to have no problem releasing the door with the aid of magic, once locked in. Indeed, that was one of the few things that  _didn’t_  present a problem.  
  
  
The emaciated Dunmer woman was banging her head on the wall again. Slumped against the damp-mottled brickwork, she jerked her neck violently backwards, a low, shuddering moan coming from her throat. The collar of her once-beautiful robe was already blotched and discoloured with dried blood.   
  
Before she could add fresh stains, the Orc sitting next to her reached across, cushioning her head with his hands as she threw herself against him. “Shhh, sera, it’s OK,” he said, in cheerful tones, grinning broadly as he tried to intercept her vacant gaze. “You’re all right, no need to carry on like that! Shhhh, now.”  
  
The woman met his gentle yellow eyes. For a moment, lucidity returned, and she looked as if she might burst into tears. Then she blinked, nodded, and began staring blankly into space again.  
  
Iriel watched her, chewing his lip.  _She’s anything but all right. Nobody here is remotely all right. But I have no idea how to help them._  
  
Julan was still trying to argue with the slaves. Not the new arrivals, who formed a mute huddle near the door, but the others, the Khajiit and Argonians they had found waiting for them in this dank, underground cell. They sat on the floor, silent and calm, only shaking their heads when invited to leave. Julan, eyes blazing, had a hand in his hair as if he might tear a chunk of it out. “Don’t you understand?!” he tried again, “We’re here to free you!”  
  
A green-throated Argonian flicked his tongue in and out of his mouth. “But we cannot go,” he said. “Kena Terano would not like it.”  
  
“We’ll protect you!”  
  
“If we left him, he would be upset.”  
  
“He’s imprisoning you! Who cares how he feels?!”  
  
A brown Khajiit turned her reflective orange gaze towards Julan. “Kena Terano asks us to wait here,” she rasped softly. “He needs us. We must stay here until we are needed. This one thanks you warmly, but you should leave before you make him upset.”  
  
Hissing air through his teeth, Julan rounded on Iriel. “What now? We can’t just leave them! Unless it’s like in Suran, and you’re going to tell me we shouldn’t rescue them because they don’t want it!”  
  
“Of course not!” Iriel was outraged. “It’s a totally different situation! These people are being controlled somehow, there’s magical influence all over them!”  
  
“…magi….een…” The Dunmer woman was staring at Iriel, mouthing words he couldn’t hear. He came and knelt beside her as the fragile bones of her jaw fluttered like a half-crushed butterfly. “He… he… put spells. On my mind, I… can’t…” she gasped and panted with the effort of speaking. “I tried… but… I…”  
  
“Please don’t keep trying to talk, sera Adusamsi.” The Orc again, taking her hand and squeezing it. “It just gets you all rattled. Shhh.”  
  
“No,” said Iriel, giving the Orc a sharp look, “let her talk. Who put spells on your mind, Adusamsi? What kind of spells?” She squeezed her eyes shut and moaned, but when she opened them, they were clearer, scarlet and pleading. “Demon priest… heretic… monstrous… he…”  
  
“She means Kena Terano,” the Orc added, helpfully. “He’s the boss here. But he’s really not an unreasonable guy, long as you don’t upset him, yeah?”  
  
The Orc was Helende’s lost guildmember, Both gro-Durug, known to his friends as Bodu. Iriel had figured this out shortly after arriving, though not immediately, despite Bodu being the only Orc captive. He was younger than Ire had expected, beardless and fresh-faced beneath a tangle of dark brown hair. He also had what Ire was pretty sure were breasts, but familiarity with the people who tended to congregate around the guild in general and Helende in particular meant Ire hadn’t been misled by them for long. Bodu had beamed in astonishment when Ire addressed him by name, though introductions hadn’t had time to get further.  
  
“What spells did he use?” Iriel restrained himself from shaking Adusamsi. He looked to Bodu instead, who only shrugged. “I’m no mage. But it’s just stuff to help us, y'know, make us feel better.”  
  
“WHAT SPELLS?!” He kept asking, although more and more, he knew the answer.  
  
“…green…” whispered Adusamsi. “…he put green magic… in me…” The elegant lines of her face collapsed, and she began wailing messily, open mouthed. As Bodu tried again to comfort her, Iriel walked away, stony-eyed.  
  
“Can’t we just kill this Terano f'lah and everyone else up there?” Julan was getting restless. “Maybe it’d break the spells.”  
  
“It might.” Iriel’s voice was distant. “It might not. And we have no idea how strong Terano is, or how many guards he has protecting him.”  
  
“What is he even doing with all these slaves down here?”  
  
“I…”  
  
Before Ire could speculate, the sound came of bolts being drawn. Iriel, hissing to Julan, “Not yet!” quickly covered the two of them with another invisibility spell, just as a bleary-eyed Dunmer appeared in the doorway.  
  
“Getting noisy in here again, I see,” he drawled, looking at Adusamsi with obvious disdain. “Always that blighted priestess, too. You’d think if those Divines of hers were worth anything, they’d have listened to her prayers, by now. But I guess they don’t like listening to her any more than I do. So make her shut up, or I will.”  
  
“Please, muthsera,” Bodu begged, eyes wide, “take her to see Kena Terano. Let him help her, like he did last time. Please, she’s just scared and sad. She needs him to help her, and then she’ll be quiet.”  
  
The guard chewed on this for a moment. “Hmmm. He  _did_ seem to like her. Better than the rest of you beasts, anyway. Fine, I’ll lug her holiness upstairs, shall I?”  
  
As the guard stepped into the room, Iriel felt Julan tense beside him, and heard the whisper of his blade leaving its sheath. Ire held his breath, but didn’t try to stop him.  
  
Then they both froze, as someone began banging a gong. Loudly and stridently, the sound crashing through the back wall of the cell, which Iriel now saw wasn’t a wall at all, but a heavy wooden screen, seven feet square and attached to a lowering mechanism. The slaves began fidgeting and making small noises of… nervousness? Excitement? It was hard to tell.  
  
The guard was the only one unaffected by the clamour. While everyone else was staring at the wooden wall, he scooped up Adusamsi and tossed her limp body over his shoulder. “Playtime again, I see!” he said, as he carried her out of the cell. “Who’s feeling lucky today, my little warriors?” A final smirk, and he was gone, the bolts slotting back into place.  
  
Julan slammed himself into the door and visibility, both at once. “Open it!” he told Iriel. “Now!”  
  
Ire ignored him. He had Bodu by the shoulders, and was gripping the young Orc and shaking him. “What does that noise mean? Why did he call you warriors?!”  
  
“It’s just a game,” Bodu said unsteadily, still smiling as he oscillated back and forth. “A way for us to enjoy ourselves, and make Kena Terano happy.”  
  
The new slaves were cowering by the door, but the original prisoners were crowding against the wooden screen. It was beginning to rise into the air, clinking, drawn by a chain on the exterior. “Kena Terano!” they cried. “Pick me, please!” “No, this one! This one will entertain Kena Terano!”  
  
“Bodu, what’s happening?” Ire stared in horror as the back wall opened to reveal a wide, round arena. Shouts could be heard, floating down from high above it, and Ire thought he recognised the hollow popping sound of summoning spells.   
  
Bodu followed Ire’s gaze. “I wish I could play, too,” he said wistfully. “But I had a bit  _too_ much fun, the first time I tried, yeah?” He pointed to his legs, curled beneath his body as he sat on the dirt floor. No, not curled. At least, not curled in a way that augured well for the bones inside them.   
  
Iriel let go of him and recoiled backwards, holding his mouth, dimly feeling Julan’s arms catch and steady him. As he heaved and retched, Bodu continued, chirpily: “I don’t remember much, but they say I didn’t want to play with the other slaves, even after the warrior spells. So they brought me an ogrim, instead. I guess I won, but then he fell on me.” He laughed. “I wish I could remember, it sounds like we all had a right old time!”  
  
The brainwashed slaves had tumbled out into the arena. Iriel heard a Dunmeri voice from above them, thin but imperious. “No, not you. I want the brown stripe with the yellow eyes, and the blue lizard. Yes, throw a Scamp in too, to keep things moving. Save the Dremora for the last one standing. The rest, put back inside. Hold on - Fevus, I thought you said we had new ones? Get them out here, I want to see them.”  
  
Footsteps down the passage, then the cell door opened again. This time, Julan jammed his blade into the guard’s throat before he was even into the room. As the Dunmer collapsed against the wall in spasms of liquid choking noises, Julan looked to Iriel, suddenly uncertain. “Now?”  
  
“Now,” Ire nodded. His jaw was clenched, but something inside him felt loosened, relieved by the move to violent resistance. He caught Julan’s sword-arm. “Stay here and protect the slaves,” he told him firmly. “You might have to defend them from each other, if he’s casting Frenzy, but do what you can with that Paralyse spell I taught you. Heal them, if necessary.” He pushed past Julan, and into the doorway.  
  
Julan saw the look on his face, and grabbed at his arm, in turn. “Where are  _you_ going?”  
  
Ire pulled himself free. “I’m going to find this fucking mage.”  
  



	142. fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: general atmosphere of rapey implication because Molag Bal cultists, but nothing like that actually happening.

Observe carefully, measure precisely, detach yourself completely. Objectively calculate the optimal outcome, according to received principles. Ensure total control via a thorough comprehension of the process, and a clear view of the projected result.  
  
Iriel was doing none of this. He had no idea what he was going to do, only a writhing clot of violent impulses, filling and driving him. The complete antithesis of Summerset magical procedure, but Iriel had always felt torn in two by Altmeri philosophy.  
  
“It is necessary to understand,” they had told him, at the Tower, “that while many magical practitioners speak of the Will as the source of their spellcraft, not all refer to the same concept, or draw their power from the same spring. For the feather-brained Bretons, it might be better termed whim, or caprice. For Imperials, it is the crude impulse to conquer and colonise, to impose their ideas upon others. Dunmeri practices are unspeakable in polite company, and most other so-called magical traditions barely rise above the level of simple inclination, base emotion. Even dumb beasts are capable of  _wanting_ things.

"We offer you a far more profound intellectual insight. Here, you will learn that true Will arises not from desire, but from knowledge. Only a full comprehension of the nature of the Aurbis will allow you to determine the course it must follow. You are but one part of a whole. The mage who acts only in accordance with himself and his petty urges, discerns nothing, and his will is equal to that worthless sum. The mage who acts in accordance with the deeper purpose of the Aurbis will find that his Will, aligned with that cosmic macrocosm, is of a magnitude far greater than himself. This is true psychic emancipation. This is the true role and responsibility of the arcane master. These are the principles upon which our society is built - of recognising the insignificance of our individual desires, compared with the progression of our culture as a whole. Of the purification of the bloodline, which in turn brings us closer to our Divine origin, that we may continue to see ever more clearly into the spiritual algorithms of the Universe.”  
  
You can probably identify the point at which Iriel, sitting up straight in his new (well, new-to-him) apprentice’s robes, began to realise the Tower wasn’t going to be the escape from mainstream Altmeri ideology he had hoped. Bind yourself to a system, and tell yourself it’s freedom! Impose it upon others, and label them selfish and degenerate if they object! Later, Ire found that leaving his homeland was still no escape from things it had seeded into him from birth. Rebellion, it turned out, wasn’t the same as emancipation, merely the other side of the coin to obedience. A coin Iriel found himself flipping, over and over, never satisfied with the outcome, but unable to throw it away.  
  
If you had asked Iriel, as he marched, fists clenched, heart racing, down the stone passageways of Rotheran, exactly what it was he was taking so personally in all this, he would have muttered something about the abuse of illusion magic reflecting badly on all practitioners, and he might even have believed it himself. In truth, he had no clear idea of what was twisting his guts into shreds, seething inside him, ready to explode all over the next person who got too close. But then, that never usually stopped him.  
  
Iriel considered that accidentally taking his personal issues out on other people was one of his worst faults. Today, he planned to do it on purpose. Today, his frustrations had, he felt, a deserving target.  
  
The first guard was facing away from him, and made no sound as his shock spell hit her in the back of the neck. She reeled sideways, legs buckling, and Iriel passed by without a second glance. The next armoured Dunmer saw him coming, and yelled for backup. He was a twitching corpse before any arrived, most eyes and ears being glued to the commotion inside the fighting arena. Ire heard shouts, but not as many as he’d feared, and one familiar voice, still defiant. He couldn’t bring himself to look over the parapet as he dashed alongside, but he sent a spell whizzing across to take out an archer on the opposite balcony who had begun aiming arrows down into the pit.  
  
Around the next turn, he skidded to a halt, and finally collected himself enough to apply invisibility. The guard who had taken Adusamsi was there, though she was no longer over his shoulder. He was standing in the mouth of a side-passage, talking to a small Dunmer with long black hair and a dark red robe.  
  
“…oing in my chambers?” the robed man demanded. “I was busy presiding over the games when I felt my wards disturbed. Explain yourself.”  
  
“Apologies, Kena Terano,” the guard said, inclining his head as he spoke. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I only thought to give you a surprise, for after. I put that pretty Cult priestess in there. She was getting hysterical again, thought you might want to deal with her personally.”  
  
“Yes, yes, I see.” Terano pursed his lips. He glanced towards the pit, with evident distaste. “I have no idea what Fevus is doing with them down there, but it already sounds like a complete shambles. We have to find a source of more robust slaves, these pathetic animals barely last two minutes. It’s an insult to our Lord.”  
  
His eyes darted down the passage behind the guard. “In fact, I shall retire, in the hope that my private devotions may prove more pleasing to Him than these sad squawkings. Tell Fevus to oversee the games in my stead. That will be all.” With a dismissive flick of his fingers, Terano scuttled off towards his chambers.  
  
Alone, the guard ambled towards the edge of the pit, and leaned against the stonework. Iriel flipped him over the parapet with a handful of Alteration magic, barely hearing his scream as he plummeted towards the fighting below. All Ire’s attention was on the retreating figure of the mage, currently vanishing through a doorway. He exhaled, hard. Forced himself to stop, and take some precautions.  
  
  
Llaren Terano heard the door open behind him with a magical fizz, and swivelled irritably, expecting to berate another of his mercenaries. Instead, he saw an unknown Altmer, wearing stained travelling clothes and an unreadable expression.  
  
“Let me guess,” Iriel said, in viciously even, savagely cordial tones, “Molag Bal, correct?”  
  
Terano’s eyes widened as he drew magicka into his hands. “This is a private sanctuary,” he hissed.  
  
“Not Sheogorath, I don’t think,” mused Ire, pushing the door shut behind him and replacing the lock spell in the same movement. “He thrives on chaos, and this place is nothing if not controlled, is it? Down to the last emotion, to ensure your peace and comfort.”  
  
Terano’s ball of green energy hit Iriel in the face. He blinked, sensing the effect, then gave a distant smile. “Thank you, but I’m already quite calm. You’ve saved me the trouble of recasting it when it lapses, though.”  
  
“Who are you? You will quickly regret invading this place. GUARDS!!” The Dunmer sent flames leaping towards Iriel this time, but Ire neutralised them with a word and a shielding gesture. “No fire, please, I’m Altmer, but go ahead and throw these famous mind control spells at me. I confess, I’m rather curious.”  
  
He scanned the room around him. It was sparsely furnished, with little more than a bed, a table and a small altar, before which Adusamsi was lying, her robe stripped, her eyes locked grimly on the ceiling. “I really don’t think this is Malacath’s style,” he said. “Malacath has no love for the weak, but he has a soft spot for the downtrodden. I can’t imagine he’d like  _you_ very much.”  
  
He rubbed his chin, casually rebuffing another fire spell as he did so. “The violence and destruction of life might suggest Mehrunes Dagon, but this isn’t really about killing, is it? Or you’d just set the Daedra on them, not make them fight each other. And that’s the real point, isn’t it? Making people do things they don’t want to do. It has Molag Bal written all over it.”  
  
He let another illusion spell engulf him. This time, he laughed as the euphoria hit, grinning manically at the bulging eyes of the furious mage. “Well. Aren’t you charming? Yes, you’re quite adorable, aren’t you? No wonder everyone here is so desperate to please you.”  
  
“I assure you,” Terano said, scanning Ire’s words for traces of sarcasm, unsure if the spell had succeeded or not, “that everyone here only acts in accordance with their desires.”  
  
“So you say.” Iriel’s index finger twitched back and forth in the air. “I don’t quite understand that part. Why bother with the spells? Surely it’s more cruel, and therefore more pleasing to your King of Rape, for people to  _know_  they’re being forced to do terrible things?”  
  
It was Terano’s turn to smile. Iriel knew that smile - the smile of a man invited to explain the gory details of his pet project. “Oh, they know,” he breathed. “Part of them always knows, and sees themselves doing it anyway. They feel their primal urge to kill overcome and suppress their conscious mind’s repulsion. They experience the guilt of yielding to their base impulses, the agonising knowledge that they failed to resist. It’s a violation on so many more levels than the mere physical. I remove none of it. I merely deny them the right to express it.”  
  
Ire blinked, as Terano quietly flooded him with more calming, charming clouds of illusion. “That’s… elegantly horrible,” he admitted. “Subtle, even. I mean… with people this alone and vulnerable, you barely even need the spells. They soften them up, but you can’t really control someone’s mind that way. The real manipulation is psychological, emotional.  You make them hurt and frightened, and then you’re the one who comforts them. Intimacy and isolation inspire trust, observation and experimentation teach you where people’s motivations lie, how they can be twisted to serve your own ends, during their weakest moments.”  
  
Terano nodded, smiling and moving closer. “We understand one another, then?” he soothed. “We’re friends, yes? Everyone’s happy, everything’s nice and quiet. We can just–”  
  
With a wrenching motion, energy lanced from Iriel’s palm. The mage screamed, as Ire, suddenly snarling, wrapped him in magicka that first bound his arms to his body, then slammed him onto the ground on his back. Ire stood over him, face pale and rigid. “Oh yes, we’re all friends here,” he said. “But if you understood the slightest thing about me, you’d know how I treat my friends. And if you think  _happiness_  is somethi–”  
  
In no mood to listen to a monologue, Terano broke free with a hoarse gasp, and kicked Ire’s knee out from under him. As he staggered and regained his balance, the Dunmer prepared another spell, and when Iriel looked back, all he saw was the pale green light as it hit.  
  
It took him a while to realise what the spell even was. Fear was the background radiation of his life, after all. And it was so familiar, this irrational terror, blocking out speech, thought, reason. Reducing his will into bare, desperate grasping for survival, clawing at breath, staggering backwards until the wall slammed into him, another shock jolting through him, dark blotches expanding across his vision.  
  
He’d never learned this spell, because he didn’t need to. Never developed a defence against it, because he could see none. It was illogical, inexplicable, incomprehensible, always had been. And Iriel did what he always did. He went down.  
  
Terano had been right. It was all there, beneath the surface. All here with him, in the darkness behind his eyelids as he collapsed, wheezing, against the wall. The entire stronghold, every suppressed scream, every neutered sob. The helplessness, the paralysis, the despair. The futility of resistance, of anything. It was all there, and Iriel was engulfed by it.  
  
 _…you deserve this… don’t pretend you’re better than this… you’re not better… not better than hurting people, using people… you’d do anything to avoid pain…  
  
_ _…if i were stronger, i would not have submitted… not been taken… but…  
_ _  
_ _…shame, failure, inadequacy… can’t go back… tainted, soiled… could never let them see me, feel their pity crawl across my flesh like flies…  
  
_ _…could never be free… could not survive… would have nothing and no one… there is no choice but to…  
  
_ _…is who i am… this is all i am worth…  
_  
He couldn’t tell how much of it was his, any more.  
  
 _…ran away when he needed you, left him to die… cowards get what they deserve…_  
  
 _…you threw away your culture because it caused you pain, and you replaced it with nothing but self-interest and degradation…_  
  
 _…not degradation… altmeri guarshit… implying you’re supposed to be better… you’re not better than this…  
_  
Adusamsi was close by, a nexus of knotted agony. He felt her writhe against her tranquillising bonds, and fall back again, exhausted.  
 _  
…not when you’ve done nothing but cover yourself in shit since you came here, like a true child of veloth… daedra shit, daedra worship… now you know what the Sapiarchs warned you about… what you could become… what you’re already…  
  
_ The slaves in the arena, their panicked powerlessness offered a single violent outlet, their pain and desperation hurling itself against the walls of their numb cage.  
  
 _…hurting people because we’re scared… always the wrong people, choosing the soft targets in our cowardice and weakness… easier to look below, than above…  
  
_ Bodu, still in the cell, the wrenching torture of his mangled bones forced beneath a threadbare blanket of cheerful equanimity.  
 _  
…but control comes from fear too, it cuts both ways, chains can be pulled from either end. there’s no need to make people fear you, unless you’re afraid of what they might do if they didn’t…  
_  
Now, he could detect Julan too, his righteous anger gradually subsumed by rising hopelessness and horror.   
  
 _…it’s the same, whoever’s doing it, Dunmer or Altmer… it’s this arrogance, this need for dominance, this desire to overpower others, just to make your own weakness more bearable, make your own fear less… less…  
  
_ He felt it, then, in Terano, the germ that began the whole epidemic. He saw the path of the infection, and traced it to its source.  
  
“It’s all in your  _head_ , Iriel!” He’d been so happy, the first time someone had said that to him. His mother, probably, though it could easily have been Firi. He’d thought they finally understood the problem, and were going to help him with solutions. He’d been upset to find that, as far as they were concerned, that was the end of the conversation.  
  
This fear, though, pinning him to the floor, as Terano dragged himself to his feet with a hacking cough, and fumbled in the pocket of his robe for a dagger… this fear was all in his head, when it shouldn’t be. It didn’t originally belong to him. It wasn’t fair. It ought to be shared.  
  
Iriel saw the channel to Terano’s mind, the trickling spring feeding the ocean of horror pressing in around him. He summoned the last fragments of his shield against it, and he let them go. Stopped resisting, let it flood into him, fill him, not only his fear choking him now, but that of every soul in Rotheran. He held it, drew together every last anguished paroxysm, and then, teetering on the brink of oblivion, straining his mind to breaking, he pushed it all back where it belonged.  
  



	143. break

When Iriel, whey-faced and blood-stained, returned to the slave pens, things initially seemed worse than when he’d left. Khajiit and Argonians were clinging together in huddles, howling and hissing. Several were injured, and three bodies lay on one side of the cell, beneath a strip of sackcloth. Her slave bracers removed, a silvery Argonian was trying to cast healing spells. Weak from disuse, the magicka fizzled and spluttered from her claw-tips as her throat undulated in frustration.

Julan was kneeling next to Bodu. The Orc’s face was clenched in quiet agony, sweat running down his cheeks, lungs forcing air past his small pointed tusks like irregular bellows. On Iriel’s entrance, Julan sprang up. He looked physically intact, but ravaged by the mental equivalent of a wolf-pack. “Thank the gods,” he croaked, taking hasty steps towards Iriel, arms held out.  
  
Iriel sidestepped them. “No,” he said, scarcely audible, “no, I don’t think I’ll be doing that.”  
  
Julan checked his approach, but scrutinised Ire. “Are you OK? What happened up there? I took down the guards and the Daedra, but I couldn’t get through to the slaves, until suddenly everyone was screaming and crying. You’re… did you… is that blood yours?”   
  
“No.”  
“So you…?”  
“Yes. It’s over.”  
  
“Adu…” Bodu was looking at him imploringly, jaw twitching as he tried to get words past the pain.  
  
“Adusamsi is fine,” Iriel said. “She’s already gone. Terano had taken her teleportation ring, but once she had it back, she could get herself to safety.”  
  
“She… did she…” Bodu swallowed, brows knitted, “…tell you any message for me, before she…?”  
  
“No, but…” Ire’s eyes softened as they met Bodu’s, “she was deeply traumatised, and she needed to leave here as quickly as possible. I’m certain she was grateful for everything you did for her.”  
  
He didn’t mention how he’d had to push the ring onto her finger, in the end, as she sobbed and shook her head, how he’d said to her, holding her robe tightly around her shoulders, “Adusamsi, you’ve survived far worse things. Their pity will  _not_ break you.”  
  
“Look, I… uh…” Julan was fidgeting, unsure what to do with his hands. “We could really use some help, here. Bodu could, I mean. With his legs. I hate to ask, ‘cause I know how you feel about… you know… but…” He glanced at the Orc, and dropped his voice to a panicked whisper. “I don’t know what to do! I could cast healing spells, but everything’s in the wrong place!”  
  
He took a ragged breath, clearly battling nausea. “I… looked, but I’m scared anything I do could make it worse. If I try to heal the bones, and they’re in the wrong position, he might never… and… and I’ve never even healed a broken bone before. Nam-La only knows Argonian bone structure!”  
  
Desperation in his voice clawed onto Ire like a drowning cat. “You studied the theory of this, right? At the Tower, even if you weren’t any good at  _casting_ Restoration, you learned how to–” Iriel was shaking his head, breath quickening. Julan grimaced, but nodded. “–OK, OK… then… if you can’t do that, can you do the other spells? The ones Terano was using before, to calm him, help with the pain, while we try to… straighten… Ire? IRE!”  
  
But Iriel, composure crumbling, was hurtling from the room.  
  
  
  
Dusk was falling outside, not that Iriel was aware of it. He had been sitting on the floor of the propylon chamber for hours now, watching lurid ribbons of teleportation magic twist and arc through the darkness. Circling the the central pillar, swooping ever closer, lighting the runes as they licked them. Tracking their path with his eyes helped to tune out some of the thoughts threatening to overwhelm him, though fragments still filtered through occasionally.  
  
_“Tell me one thing. Why? Why worship this monster, the worst of all possible Daedra? How could anything justify committing these acts for him?”_  
  
_“I am teaching something important. I am teaching submission.”_  
  
_“You’re not teaching anything, you’re abusing and murdering people!”_  
  
_“I did not say that I was teaching it to the slaves. Although pain can be a useful lesson, should they choose to heed it. All Mundus is but a brief and brutal arena. Their souls will be stronger in Coldharbour.”_  
  
_“Don’t pretend you care about their souls. You’re trading them for power.”_  
  
_“What if I am, Altmer? Beasts are a tool, just as the Daedra are a tool. And my Prince is the sharpest of them all. His is the most unrefined of raptures, but a rapture nonetheless.”_  
  
_“For I have not yet learned to refine my rapture. My love is accidentally shaped like a spear.”_  
  
_“And a spear is a fine weapon. You see, I am following in the footsteps of my comrade Lord Vivec, and taking power where it can be found. The Daedra are the blood of Padomay, forces of chaos, yet they cannot themselves alter their natures. This makes them predictable, and a predictable force may be harnessed.”_  
  
_“The Daedra… you Dunmer aren’t worshipping them, you’re using them!”_  
  
_“The lofty Altmer finally sees what’s under his nose, does he? But you still cannot understand. And will not, so long as you keep striving to return your bloodlines to the Aedra. The myopic futility of it! No wonder Veloth had to leave, to pursue his vision for our people. Your natures are as fixed as the Daedra.”_  
  
_“And you reach nothing divine through this violence.”_  
  
_“Hah! You quote the Lessons well, for an outlander. Try this one: 'Below me is the savage, which we needed to remove ourselves from the Altmer. Above me is a challenge, which bathes itself in fire and the essence of a god.’ Your people are moving backwards, but the Dunmer are moving forwards. We are still the Changed Ones, and we have not finished changing yet.”_  
  
_“YOU have.”_  
  
  
The teleportation pillar was encrypted, requiring a key of some sort. Iriel had wondered whether he could break the enchantment, but hadn’t actually tried. As long as he didn’t know if it was possible, he could avoid the far more difficult task of talking himself out of activating it, and vanishing without a word.   
  
Absorbed in the luminous dance of the propylon, he felt, rather than saw, Julan sit down beside him. When he turned, after-images wreathed Julan’s face with twisting neon snakes that only served to highlight the exhausted anxiety of his expression. “I’m sorry,” Ire told him.  
  
“I know. How are you doing?”  
  
“Never mind me. How’s Bodu?”  
  
“Not sure yet.” Julan took a long breath. “You probably don’t want to hear about it. It wasn’t pretty.”  
  
“I… should.”  
  
“Why? You making yourself upset again won’t do him any good.”  
  
“Even so.”  
  
“Then… We had to… rebreak some things. They’d… fused together all wrong, and we had to make it right before we could fix it.”  
  
“And did you?”  
  
“That’s what I don’t know. He’d passed out by then, which was for the best. I… it needs more time. I can’t be sure if… if anything’s any better than before.”  
  
“You did your best.”  
  
“When was  _that_ ever good enough?” He leaned his head back against the wall.   
  
Ire didn’t reply.  
  
After a while, Julan continued, his gaze, too, now hooked on the writhing propylons. “I keep thinking,” he said, “is it the same way, with us? It feels like it. That something was wrong, but I couldn’t see what, until I’d already broken everything. But… if we could fix it  _right_ , this time…”  
  
Iriel almost laughed, mostly through horror. “Oh gods. Are you sure you want to drag poor Bodu into another of your trite life-lesson metaphors? You’re dooming him with the comparison. You just admitted you have no idea how to fix anything, and it might be even worse.”  
  
“It’s like you told me, wanting to heal something isn’t enough.” His eyes slid sideways. “I still think  _you_ know how. But you don’t want to, and I get why, but–”  
  
“Because the analogy doesn’t fit. We don’t fit. We’re not one person, we’re two people, and fusing two broken people isn’t healing them.”  
  
Julan lowered his brows, frustrated. “You’re twisting it. I don’t mean merging us together, that’s what we tried before, and it didn’t work. Because there was too much hidden, we couldn’t understand each other. It’s different, now. It’s painful, but more… honest, maybe.”  
  
“You want honesty, do you?” Ire’s voice was colourless. “You’re right. Wanting it isn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. Because everything that already happened can’t  _un_ happen. So unless you think healing involves self-induced double amnesia–”  
  
“That’s not what I mean either! I don’t  _want_ to forget what I did! I was a monster to you, and there’s no excuse, I just… felt like my insides had been torn out, and all my worst fears were true. I couldn’t see anything past it. But I can see clearer now, I understand things, and I’m just… so sorry I hurt you. That I messed everything up so badly.”  
  
Ire had been massaging his brow with the heel of his hand, but when Julan veered into this territory, he closed his eyes and dragged his fingers down his cheek with a groan. “Will you stop apologising! You’ve said you’re sorry enough, and I believe you. You’re not making anything better by doing this, so don’t.”  
  
“Iya, I came here because you asked me, and whenever you tell me to, I’ll go. Nothing’s happened between us out here that you didn’t choose. But don’t ask me to stop wanting what I want. And don’t expect me to give up fighting for it, when so many things are telling me it’s not hopeless, that whatever you say, you still feel–”  
  
“Julan–”  
  
“I  _know_ I can’t just ask that you forgive me, but if you’d give me a second chance… third, fourth… whatever I’m on, just one more chance to prove–”  
  
“NO!!!”  
  
In the echoing aftermath of his outburst, Iriel inhaled, collected himself. When he spoke again, his voice was almost level. “Because this isn’t about what you think it is. The problem is not that I can’t forgive you. The problem is that I could. And I’m scared of that, but not for the reason you think.”  
  
“I get why you don’t trust me not to hurt you, but–”  
  
“I said NOT for the reason you think!”  
  
“Then… why…?”  
  
Iriel was slouching and hugging his knees, but the glare he levelled over them was steady and piercing. “Tell me something. What would you do, to get me to take you back? To stay in my good graces, if I did?”  
  
“Anything, just tell me–”  
  
Iriel’s arms didn’t move, but an index finger flicked upright. “Aaaand there’s the problem, right there. Anything? So you’d murder innocents for me, would you?”  
  
“No, of course not!”  
  
“Well, I’m glad you have some boundaries. But you’ve always been ready to defend  _other_ people’s rights. What about you? What would you put up with from me, if it only affected you, where’s the limit of your toleration?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You have no idea, do you? Neither do I. It used to be me working for the Empire, but you’ve adjusted to that now, haven’t you? You’re very good at adapting, reducing your expectations. Who knows where the fuck your limit is, now, and what’ll happen, next time I help you find it? The thing is, I’m not even scared of that, of finding out where your boundaries are. I’m scared I won’t. I’m scared I’ll keep pushing you, and never even find a point where you push back. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t trust  _me_.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
Ire looked away, tightening his grip around his knees. “I don’t want to become that person again. The one I was, when I met you. But you’d let me. You’d let me be as selfish and demanding as I wanted, you’d let me insist my needs overrode yours any time I liked. Let me decide how much I took, and when, and how much I gave you in return. Worse than before, because I’d use your guilt to manipulate you, silence you, keep you in line. It wouldn’t be fair.”  
  
“I don’t get an opinion on that?”  
  
“You don’t know what’s fair! Nobody’s been fair to you a day in your life! Least of all me. And I knew it all along. I rejected Kaye because I thought he’d care for me in a controlling way, but with you, I knew I’d be the one in control. You were right. I was always the strong one. And I can’t be trusted with that role. I never should have let anything happen between us in the first place.”  
  
He let his head fall forwards. “It was all true, what I said to you on that fucking Ebonheart tower. I don’t have the emotional capacity to be in a relationship. I knew it, and I dragged you down anyway. Who cares about using someone, as long as they serve your purposes, right? My ma’d laugh to hear that for all my talk about leading my own life, I still turned out exactly like her.”  
  
Julan was squinting and shaking his head, perhaps from the conversational whiplash. “How… in Oblivion… have you managed to twist this so far that now everything’s your fault, and I need protecting from you?!”  
  
Ire’s face was buried somewhere beneath a tangled mass of hair and arms. “I need to be on my own,” came his muffled voice. “Figure out how to fix my fucking  _self_ , before I screw up any more people.”  
  
Julan stared at him for a while, shifting his jaw. Then, with a sharp sigh, he turned away. “Well. I always said I didn’t know what you needed, so…” He stood up. “I should head back and see how everyone is. It’s getting dark. I’m going to stay in the cell with Bodu tonight, as we can’t move him yet, but most of the others are sleeping in the guard barracks across the plaza. Talk to Idhassi and J'Raksa, they’re getting people supplied.”  
  
“Wait!” Ire didn’t look up, but he waved a hand. “My bag. It’s in the cell. Open it, and take out all the unmarked blue bottles, that’s the skooma. Give it to Bodu, it’ll help a lot with the pain. I should have thought of it earlier, but I was too out of it.”  
  
“Are you sure it’s OK?”  
  
“It should be. Tell him what it is, of course, but say it’s very unlikely he’d get addicted from such a short usage period. Even if he did… I doubt the withdrawal would be a problem for him. It’s… never really about that, if I’m honest.”  
  
“No, I meant… don’t you need it?”  
  
“I… actually haven’t had any for two days. Anyway, he needs it more than I do.”  
  
  
  
The next morning, Iriel was down by the water’s edge, examining a rowing boat. The silver Argonian, Nam-La was with him, soaking her slender feet in the shallows. She moved like a dancer, even in her weakened state, every motion polished and precise, light as the sun on the waves. He watched her extend her leg in front of her, seawater dripping from her claws as she processed his confused response to her last question.  
  
“I thought you must be a member,” she said, at last. “But if you are not, perhaps you should be. You have freed us, so I will tell you this. If you are asked, 'Have you seen the Twin Lamps?’ you must say, 'They light the way to freedom.’”  
  
“Asked by whom?” Ire said, before recalling at least one person who already had.  
  
Nam-La was stretching her other leg, as if rediscovering its entire existence. Wasted muscles and sinews drew wire-taut beneath her shimmering scales. “I do not know,” she said. “I only know they help slaves to go home.”  
  
“An activist group, with a secret password?” Ire was chewing his cheek. “Would you mind repeating all this to Julan? And anything else you remember? I think… that would be perfect.”  
  
  
  
Ire didn’t see Julan all morning, he and some others off plundering the stronghold for anything of value. Only when everyone reassembled to view the spoils, did Iriel get a chance to talk.  
  
“Huh?” Julan looked up from examining a Daedric dagger. “I thought we agreed to head for Dagon Fel, and charter a ship to Ebonheart. Azura knows what Terano was stockpiling all this gold for, but there’s more than enough here, even if we have to pay extra to keep the captain quiet. And even split fourteen ways, there’ll be plenty left over. Look, if you’re worried the locals still think you’re a warlock, you can stay invisible till we’re at sea.”  
  
“It’s a good plan,” Ire said. “You should stick to it. You’re armed, trained, and well-suited to ensure everyone gets there safely.”  
  
“But why are you saying you’re not coming?”  
  
“Because if I can get Bodu back into range of Intervention, I can get him to a professional healer, faster. I can’t teleport everyone, but I can transport him, and support his body with spells. We’ll row south, it can’t be far.”  
  
Julan nodded, slowly. “Makes sense,” he said.  
  
  
  
Ire saw him one last time, that day. Late afternoon, the sinking sun skimming the plaza, as everyone prepared to depart. An extra night sleeping rough was agreed to be a small price to pay for getting as far away from Rotheran as quickly as possible. Iriel, back on the beach, saw the ex-slaves clustering on the stronghold steps, their cheerful voices carrying across the bay. Bodu was already in the boat, padded in with blankets, and as comfortable as Ire could make him.  
  
“So… you’re ready? You have enough food, you know where you’re headed?” Julan had brought Bodu down, but now the others were waiting for him. He regarded Iriel dubiously, perhaps suspecting he might get himself lost in the narrow strait between here and Vvardenfell.  
  
Ire nodded, clenching his jaw, surprised by Julan’s casual demeanour, given the circumstances. “We’ll be fine,” he said.  
  
“Yeah, I know. I’m not worried, just making sure.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Need any help pushing the boat out, or d'you want to use magic, or–”  
  
“I can manage.”  
  
An awkward pause, during which, behind Iriel, Bodu began studiously examining the distant horizon, humming softly to himself under his breath.  
  
“So, I guess this is–”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
It didn’t seem possible for the silence to get more awkward, yet it did. Julan’s fingers curled around the nape of his neck. Ire stood motionless, eyes unfocused. Bodu stifled a cough, then hissed “sorry!” in a stage-whisper.  
  
“Before you go. You… could forgive me?”  
  
“I forgave you a long time ago, whether I wanted to or not. But it’s not  _about_ forgiveness. We’re still a mess. My forgiveness changes nothing.”  
  
“It does for me.” Julan smiled. “Listen… maybe you’re right. You usually are, after all. I get my teeth into things, and I can’t tell when to let go, but… maybe it’s for the best. You know, the way my life’s been, I’ve never lacked time on my own to think. It doesn’t usually get me anywhere, that’s the trouble. Still… when I was in Gnisis, I… I missed you, but… in some ways, it was easier. And it’ll get easier still, right? You don’t need to worry about me.”  
  
He met Ire’s frozen gaze. “I’ll probably head back there, after the slaves are safe in Ebonheart. Train, figure out my next move. You’ll… be taking this new book to Demnevanni, right?”  
  
Trapped beneath falling rocks of his own instigation, Iriel managed a shrug.  
  
“Well. If you happen to drop by the Tradehouse, I’ll buy you a drink, and try not to make it weird. If you don’t, I’ll… take the hint, I guess. And hope you find everything you need.”  
  
If Julan had stood there a second longer, Ire would have kissed him. But he didn’t, he only smiled again, brief and flickering, and turned away. So Ire only watched him walk back towards the stronghold, getting smaller as he moved along the path, finally climbing the stairs to the plaza and vanishing over the top.  
  
  
  
“I could row. My legs may be busted, but my arms are fine.”  
“No.”  
“You sure? Because–”  
“I want. To row.”  
“OK, pal. Your rescue, your call.”  
  
  
“Reckon we’ll get in range of the intervention networks any time soon, mebbe?”  
“I don’t. Care.”  
“Please lemme row?”  
“NO.”  
“We could stop, till you’re not, like, all–”  
“I WANT. TO ROW.”  
“OK, buddy. I hear you.”  
  
  
“Pal… If you don’t wanna let go the oars till we hit Akavir, that’s your business, but… d'you want me to, like, wipe your face for you? Or I'mma hafta start bailing, here.”  
  
“…yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hat tip to Rotten Deadite for [their essay on the Dunmer and Molag Bal](http://www.newwhirlingschool.com/essays/vivecamaranthlife.php) (and their 36 Lessons commentaries, from which comes a lot of the Vehkian scholarship Iriel mentions)


	144. work

“You said you were taking me home!” Bodu’s hands, casually resting on the gunwhale moments earlier, had tightened around it.  
  
“I am.” Chest heaving, Iriel leaned on the oars as the keel of the little boat scraped onto the sand of the Sheogorad coast. “But the Intervention network here only connects to Ald'ruhn.”  
  
“I don’t wanna go to Ald'ruhn!”  
  
“There’s a Temple, the healers can help you.”  
  
“I don’t wanna get stuck in some Temple infirmary bed for ages, all on my own! I wanna go to Sadrith Mora, where my friends are!”  
  
“I know, but I can’t row us any further tonight, and whatever you keep saying, you’re in no state to either.”  
  
“You won’t lemme try! How much further can it be, anyway? Kinda looks like we’re in the Grazelands already.”

Iriel peered along the moonlit beach. “We should be. I took a long eastern detour to avoid that Daedric ruin, and the far more serious hazard nearby.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“My ex’s mother.”  
  
“Uh… okay, pal.” Bodu’s eyebrows twitched, but he didn’t push the matter. “So how long till we’re close enough to magic home? Can’t be too far, right?” His face slipped into a guileless, amiable grin that was evidently a personal speciality for getting his own way. “What if we went overland? Less work for you than rowing, you just gotta do the spells to carry me.”  
  
Iriel glared at him through hair plastered to his face with at least three different types of salty water. “Not  _less_  work,” he said. “Only _different_  work.”  
  
“Makes a change, then, yeah?”  
  
Ire tried to pretend he wasn’t a complete sucker for guileless, amiable grins. “Listen, you can’t seriously expect…”  
  
“Pleeeease don’t make me go to Ald'ruhn, last time I was there Aengoth got really mad at me and Cel. I don’t wanna go there, I wanna go home. You said Cel was there already, yeah? I hope he’s not too sore at me for leaving him. I was gonna come back once I’d gotten some help, but I guess I got lost. Then the slavers picked me up.” He looked dolefully down at his legs, winced dramatically, then turned his gaze upon Ire, golden eyes shining with emotion. “I just wanna go home.”  
  
Iriel sighed. While he could see Bodu’s piteous performance was largely artificial, he couldn’t deny the young Orc had every right to it. He kicked off his boots, preparing to haul the boat ashore. “All right. I suppose it can’t be more than a few miles before I can pick up the signal from Sadrith Mora.”  
  
  
  
Bodu leaned back happily into the blanket. “Thanks again, buddy. I gotta see if Cel’s doing okay, yeah? He doesn’t always do so well when I’m not around.”  
  
Ire gritted his teeth, trying to maintain control. It had seemed safer to use telekinesis on a blanket, rather than levitate Bodu himself, but it left Iriel with more moving parts to keep track of. Specifically, four corners of a blanket to maintain in a chair-like shape, while also preventing his own feet from stumbling into kwama-holes or stepping on shalk. Small-talk, on top of this, was beyond him. This was no impediment to Bodu, who, with nothing else to do, had taken it upon himself to handle both sides of the conversation.  
  
“He’s not my boyfriend, in case you were wondering,” he was saying. “It’s not like that. We’re best buds, yeah? Bros for life! We used to be with the Balmora guild, but after Helbasi exploded, we went with Helende to start a new branch.”  
  
Sheer bafflement finally drove Iriel to contribute. “After…?”  
  
“The break-up, I mean. I was glad about it, ‘cause Habasi always hated me and Cel. Nothing but aggro, while we were there.”  
  
“I can’t help but suspect,” Ire grated, staggering blearily through jagged clusters of wickwheat, “that every time you say someone got angry with you and Cel, what you actually mean is that Celegorn did something to piss them off, and you took his side.”  
  
Bodu shrugged. “Sure, whatever. Same thing. Mess with Cel, mess with me, yeah?”  
  
“It doesn’t irritate you, to constantly have relationships destroyed by Celegorn’s… by Celegorn?”  
  
“No. 'Cause he’s my bro.”  
  
“You, um… I’m not working with a huge amount of data here, but… you don’t seem to have much in common.”  
  
“We don’t, really. He’s into his writing, his drumming and his knives, I’m more into fixing things, hanging out and doing business, building up my contacts. If Cel doesn’t get to 'em first!”  
  
Iriel’s eyelid twitched at the mention of Cel’s drumming. “Do you owe him your life or something?” he demanded, incredulous. “I’ve heard rumours of strict gender roles in Orcish communities, did he help you escape, or–”  
  
Bodu was laughing. “Naaaah, pal, c'mon, nothing like that! I grew up in Pelagiad, helping in my mom’s antique store. Things were okay, just boring. Till my mom tells me to get rid of the rat she thinks is in the basement, and it turns out to be Cel. He’d run away from the plantations, yeah? Right old state he was in. Took days till I found out he could even talk. Anyway, Mom said he couldn’t stay, so we left.”  
  
Iriel threw a sceptical look over his shoulder. “So… you’re not lovers, you don’t share interests, except for the part where he enjoys sabotaging yours, and every so often, he ruins your life so badly you have to switch towns. It’s clearly a rather unequal arrangement, and I’m struggling to understand the reason you’re still friends, let alone… 'bros’.”  
  
“No, but, yeah, but… we’re bros! It’s not about being equal, or having reasons. We decided we were gonna be bros, so we are.”  
  
“Well.” Ire had no energy to debate the wisdom of this decision. “It sounds like a lot of work.”  
  
“I guess,” Bodu said peaceably.  
  
  
Iriel knew it was risky to exhaust himself physically and magically at the same time, but he thought he was monitoring his energy levels. Abruptly blacking out came as a complete surprise. He wasn’t even trying to cast Divine Intervention, only test the connection, in order to determine which network he was currently able to access. The signal from the Wolverine Hall beacon was detectable, but faint and intermittent, suddenly drawing far more power from him than he expected. He withdrew his awareness, too late. All his senses sank into grey fuzz, and Bodu’s blanket dropped him into the grass with a loud yelp.  
  
He knew he hadn’t been unconscious for long, partly because it was still dark, and mostly because Bodu was still yelling. But there were other sounds around him now, too, and a warm, liquid feeling on the back of his neck. Presently, he succeeded in rolling over.  
  
The guar, still drooling, pushed its soft, leathery muzzle into his face. All Ire saw when he opened his eyes was a pale mass that split open to reveal an enormous purple tongue, which caressed him soggily.  
  
Through his spluttering and flailing, he heard a familiar voice. “Pasha! Ishuh na! Leave him alone, silly girl, he thinks you want to eat him!”  
  
Once she’d drawn as much entertainment from the situation as she felt sufficient, Shani regained control of the guar’s reins and pulled Pasha’s head aside. Ire saw, instead, her smirking face high above him, braids swinging as she leaned confidently back in the saddle. “Don’t get excited, it’s not a compliment,” she said. “She’ll lick anything, this one.”  
  



	145. understanding

She’d been on late night patrol with another scout, the vaguely-bearded Rakeem, when she heard Bodu’s shouts. At least, Shani called it a patrol. Rakeem, silent and sulky, trailing behind as Shani escorted them back to the camp, had apparently viewed it in more optimistic terms.  
  
“We didn’t interrupt something, did we?” Iriel asked, glancing guiltily back at Shani’s glowering companion.  
  
Shani snorted. “No, nothing,” she said, deliberately loud enough for Rakeem to hear. “Everything’s really boring tonight. I’m happy to find someone I can talk to!”

Bodu snickered from atop the guar, where he was clinging to the saddle with a slightly panicked but completely thrilled ‘holy crap, I’m on a guar!’ expression. “That’s harsh,” he told Shani.  
  
“I’ll stop being harsh when he stops being gross,” she retorted. “He thinks if he waits around long enough, all the good-looking boys will leave for the cities, and I’ll have to settle for him. He should go stick his head in an ashpit, he’ll feel the benefit sooner.”  
  
“Kuruh daelin cha-yomar bel-guar?” offered Iriel.  
  
She grinned at him. “That, too. Careful, his Tamrielic’s awful, but he might understand that one. Though he sounds weird, even in Velothi. He’s not real Ahemmusa, he joined us as an outcast, years ago.”   
  
“That’s a thing that can happen? Outcasts getting reincorporated into tribes?”  
  
“Of course, if we trust them. Rakeem was only  _haishan_  because his whole clan had been killed, except him and his brother.” She darted Iriel a meaningful look. “So it depends. On who they are, and whether they’re stubborn, scrib-for-brains idiots.” She paused, tugging thoughtfully on the guar-reins as she led it across the Grazelands. “Where  _is_ that–”  
  
“Depends on they are murderous witch son!” Rakeem had broken his silence. Behind them, he was snarling, teeth bared in simmering fury.  
  
Shani rolled her eyes. “Yes, Rakeem, we all know about your heroic escape from the scary mabrigash. Ignore him, everyone, he’s all sheath and no dagger. Why’d you think he ran away, instead of fighting one stupid old woman?”  
  
“Do you fight her? You dare fight witch, Shanishilabi? No, you do not, when you have many reasons. You tell why, then!”  
  
“I’ve got better things to do.” Shani scowled and swiped at the wickwheat carelessly with her free hand, but a lack of conviction in her voice hinted that Rakeem had touched a nerve.  
  
“Mashti?” Ire wrinkled his nose. “She may be low on charm, but I really think all these mabrigash are faking their ridiculous claims about ghost snakes, ectoplasmic scrib or what-have-you. It’s all just a big smokescreen to make themselves appear less weak and vulnerable.”  
  
“I used to think that, too,” Shani muttered. “Before she murdered half the tribe.” When Iriel stared at her in horror, she shrugged, uncomfortable. “Probably, anyway. Back then, I didn’t want to believe it, but… I was still with  _him_ , wasn’t I? Now, I don’t know any more.” She huffed, tossed her braids over her shoulder, and addressed Rakeem. “Go on then, tell Iriel your one exciting story.” She smirked. “You know you want to.”  
  
Rakeem was unimpressed by Shani’s blasé attitude. “How do you smile,” he rasped, “about death of so many, death of all pride for the Ahemmusa?”  
  
“Because it was three years ago, and I can’t be sad forever. I have to live my life. Anyway, I’m not laughing at them, I’m laughing at you.” She turned her attention to Bodu after that, the two of them joking and flirting cheerfully, leaving Iriel to fall into step with Rakeem, a short distance behind.  
  
While Bosmer men generally acquired facial hair at a similar age to humans, and Altmer past their first century, if ever, most Dunmer began gaining it their forties or fifties. Rakeem’s barely-there goatee marked him as having a certain maturity, then, although Iriel wouldn’t have guessed him far past thirty-five. He traipsed through the grass, rolling his shoulders wearily under their netch pauldrons, his eyes on the stars. Ire felt rather sorry for him, wondering if he deserved Shani’s evident disdain. Either way, it seemed unfair of her to broadcast it, when he wasn’t in a linguistic position to defend himself.  
  
“Saveth maeli?” Iriel ventured, hoping his tone would overcome the imprecision of the phrase, and convey his real meaning:  _are you all right?  
_  
Rakeem exhaled, and gave Ire a bitter look. “Can’t be sad forever,” he repeated, more bleak then mocking. “Have to live my life.”  
  
“That sounds wonderful,” said Ire. “Can she teach us how to do it?”  
  
Rakeem laughed despite himself, and his eyes met Iriel’s with shared understanding. “Shanishilabi, she…” he grimaced, searching for the words. “she is not truly empty in heart. It is how she holds her pain. To look always ahead of it, as if she lives already there.”  
  
“Will you please tell me what happened, three years ago? If it’s not too painful.”  
  
Rakeem shrugged. “Too painful if I tell or not tell, it’s same. I tell, but I talk very stupid in your words.”  
  
“Sounding a little awkward in Tamrielic doesn’t mean you’re stupid, and I promise, I sound far more stupid when I speak Velothi. I can understand some, though, if you speak slowly. Um.. perhaps I can even say that. Hawaroith ninnali, ainnazipal… sibatili?” He knew he was making errors, but that seemed to reassure Rakeem, who grinned, nodded, and began.  
  
  
Gradually, alternating languages, and occasionally resorting to improvised sign language, Iriel gained a picture of what had happened. Three summers previously, Rakeem had been part of the ashkhan’s hunting party, a source of great pride to him. Out in the Grazelands, they had encountered a group of Hungers, four together, right in their path. They didn’t move until the Ahemmusa attacked, at which point the Daedra immediately fled, in a manner that Rakeem now considered suspiciously calculated. At the time, he felt only the thrill of the chase, and excitement at the prospect of prestigious Daedric hunting trophies.   
  
As the most newly-initiated warrior, though, he was denied a chance at glory. Seeing the Hungers run into a cave, the ashkhan Han-Sashael, thinking his prey was cornered and good as dead, ordered Rakeem to run back to camp and fetch the packguar, to carry back the spoils.  
  
He hadn’t gone far, when he saw the mabrigash creeping through the grass, the sunlight glinting off her dagger. Being a traditionally-minded Ashlander male, he was naturally wary she might extract his vital essence, and avoided confrontation. Hidden among the rocks, he watched, horror-stricken, as Mashti approached the cave, dispatched the man left outside as lookout (here, Rakeem mimed spellcasting, then snapped his fingers, and let his wrist fall limp: instant kill), and calmly walked inside.  
  
Unfrozen, Rakeem had sprinted home to fetch the rest of the tribe, who all poured across the Grazelands bearing whatever weapons they could snatch up, but it was too late. The trap had been sprung.  
  
The scene inside the cave was one of bloody massacre. One hunter survived a few minutes, long enough to describe entering a cave filled with summoned Daedra of all kinds, that quickly tore the warriors to shreds. The only ones missing from the slaughter were the ashkhan and the mabrigash, vanished into the deeper tunnels. As they were removing the bodies, they heard Han-Sashael’s screams, echoing from far below, the sound of a man dying painfully. The Ahemmusa caught up the rest of their dead, and ran.  
  
They struggled home in shell-shocked disarray, dragging the mutilated corpses of their husbands, brothers and sons. The ashkhan was never seen again, alive or dead, but the mabrigash was. Rakeem, his voice low but insistent, claimed he looked back, as they crested the ridge, and saw her leave the cave.  
  
“I see her,” he told Iriel, “and she is calm, calm like stone. She is all clean, no blood on her. Daedra do not touch her.” He raised an eyebrow. “We do not touch her then also, from pain and fear. Later, we try to take our blood from her, but…” He flicked a hand, resigned. “We are weak, now. She has many defences. We can do nothing.”  
  
“So, now you know Rakeem’s little story.” Shani hopped up onto a rock in her path, and back down again. They were almost at the camp, Iriel could hear the chimes. “Exciting, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of him once we’re home. We can sit by the fire, and Minabibi can find us some food. Are you staying the night?”  
  
Ire shook his head. His magicka recovered, he could detect the Sadrith Mora intervention network now, but thought Bodu could use a meal, a short rest, and possibly Mamaea’s professional opinion on his legs before they teleported. For his part, he had questions, and despite his reservations, he asked the first. “How much involvement did Julan have in what his mother did?”  
  
Shani gave him a sharp, incredulous look. “What do  _you_  think? He’s a short-tempered scuttlehead, but… whatever they say, he’s not like her. He won’t even admit she did it. He doesn’t understand how deep her hatred for this tribe is, so he has no idea what she’s capable of. Or maybe he does, but he won’t face up to it. It’s hard to know, with him, what he really believes, and what he only tells himself he does. But you can never get through to him about anything to do with his mother.”   
  
Ire suddenly saw Julan, wine-drunk and lost in memories, scrawling spilled-shein pictures on Muriel’s oakwood table.   
  
 _They tried to burn her a couple of years ago. They came from Ahemmusa camp with torches and spells, and were going to set fire to her yurt while she was in it. …I remember standing in front of the yurt, holding my sword against people I knew, that I’d grown up around. I didn’t know if I could really fight them, but I’d never seen such hate and fear on their faces before._ _…Lies, more lies, always new, and always the same! She’s just… different, and they punish her for it. …She needs me, and she doesn’t have anyone else._  
  
Shani pulled at the wickwheat ears as she passed, scraping the grains free with her fingers and letting them fall. Then she tilted her head at Iriel, who was chewing his cheek miserably. “Come on then, where is he? You’re meant to be looking after him.”  
  
“Julan’s fine, honestly, he’s just…” Ire couldn’t meet her eye. “…I’m sorry. I tried. I really did, but… it turns out the best way I can look after people is to get them far away from me.”  
  
“What are you saying? You didn’t let him go to Red Mountain again, did you? Iriel, you promised!” She rounded on him, hand on hip, and Ire dodged to the other side of the guar.  
  
For a while, she pursued him as far as the reins would allow, while he evaded, staring at the ground and ignoring her remonstrations. Then he heard Bodu, in his whisper that wasn’t really a whisper, hissing helpfully over his head to Shani: “Best not push it, mebbe. They broke up!”  
  
“They what?” She was amused, evidently thinking she’d misunderstood. Then Ire finally looked up, and the panic-stricken guilt in his eyes made hers widen. “You… and he… were…?”  
  
Iriel wasn’t sure whether she was about to hit him, or burst out laughing, and possibly, neither was she. Before either of them found out, Ire grabbed onto Bodu, and cast Divine Intervention as hard as he could.  
  
He never intendedto teleport the guar as well, but sometimes these things just happen.  
  



	146. worst

There will now follow, in chronological order, a selection of scenes from the life of Iriel of No Fixed Address. Running the course of a week in Balmora that he would later look back on as the last time he had anything remotely resembling a normal life, although he didn’t appreciate this at the time.  
  
The setting: the lower floor of the South Wall Corner Club, a grubby dive bar frequented by thieves and ne'erdowells. Exits: a staircase to the floor above, and a door to the back room. Dramatis personae: Sottilde, a feisty Nord bar-wench in her late twenties, and Iriel, a skittish and neurotic Altmer in his mid-twenties.

  
Scene 1:  3E 428, 31 First Seed, mid-afternoon.  
  
The bar was empty. Sottilde, her eyelids too heavy to read, had abandoned her sheet of half-deciphered code in favour of watching the tap of the mazte barrel drip. Leaning on her elbow, she stared fixedly at each slow-swelling droplet as it rounded and began to distort downwards. At the last moment, she caught each one on a languid fingertip, and conveyed it to her mouth.  
  
She perked up instantly when Iriel came down the stairs, a heavy travelling bag on his back, eyes darting from one end of the room to the other. Once reassured they were alone, he advanced on Sottilde, holding up a hand for silence before she could even greet him. Grinning, she waited obediently as he seated himself opposite her. Without breaking eye contact, he took out a coin purse, and emptied a large quantity of gold onto the bar.  
  
Sottilde’s jaw dropped, her gaze flickering from the gold, to Iriel and back. “What’re you–”  
  
Ire’s palm appeared before her face again. “Shut up and let me get this over with.”  
  
He counted ten gold coins into a stack, and began pushing it towards her, before pausing. “Did we agree ten gold as a binary yes/no overall pass or fail state, or are you going to argue that you meant ten gold per individual instance of failure?”  
  
Sottilde dropped her head onto her hand, and looked at him sideways. “Ire, you goddamn… I  _knew_ it.”  
  
“Clearly,” he said, voice dripping condescension, “or you wouldn’t have put money on it. And you won, so let me pay up, and then we can all move on with our lives as quickly as possible.” His fingers idled against the stack, raising and lowering the top coin with a soft, repetitive clink.  
  
“All right.” She flicked his restless hand away, and scooped up the gold. “Ten gold per time, just ‘cause I gotta know how bad it is, and you can clearly afford it.” She eyed the gold. “I hope so, anyway. I tell you what - if it’s enough to bankrupt you, you bloody well deserve it. Deserve getting your ban krupted right off, you do.”   
  
Iriel sighed, and began counting out another four piles of ten gold each. On the completion of each one, he slid it across to Sottilde, as her expression grew ever more despairing, coin by coin. Then he paused, tapping a gold piece against his lower lip.  
  
“How should I calculate… partial infractions? You bet me I’d fuck him, but you didn’t define the exact parameters of 'fuck’.”  
  
Sottilde groaned. “Is this gonna be like that time you wanted to debate exactly what counted as losing your virginity for hours, until we were all falling asleep?”  
  
“Listen, if people didn’t hold such reductionist views about  _penetration_ , I… oh, never mind. I’ll just… estimate something, shall I?”  
  
“You do that.”  
  
He counted out another five gold. He paused again, chewing his lip. He slid the stack of five across, and placed another coin on the table. He stared at it, fidgeting a finger across the rest of the pile. After a moment, he put another coin on top of it. More lip-chewing and fidgeting, then he added another, making three. He began to slide it across, then just as Sottilde reached out for it, he snatched the third coin back off the stack and replaced it in his pile again.  
  
Sottilde was yawning. “Are you done now?”  
  
Iriel’s eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “Yes. We really are. This time, we’re done.”  
  
“Well, I meant done with the gold, but…”  
  
“I pushed him away as hard as I could, and… he let me.”  
  
She bit her lip. “Oh, no. Oh babe, I’m sorry.”  
  
“He… he told me I was  _right_.”  
  
“That bastard.”  
  
“The thing I don’t understand… is how it can hurt this much… when I broke my heart over him once already?”  
  
She reached across the bar to ruffle his hair. “You are  _such_  a scuttlehead.”  
  
He leaned into the touch of her hand. “I know.”  
  
“You are the actual worst  _ever_  at breakups.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“If it makes it any better, I’m the second worst.” She sighed noisily, eyes closed. “Rals was back in town the other week. Only for one night, then he was off on another stupid deathtrap smuggling run… but of course I rolled over for him. Legs in the air like a frisky Rift pony. 'Course I fuckin’ did, 'cause I’m still a sap for that raddled old shitbag. So… don’t be too hard on yourself for failing.”  
  
“No, I succeeded. I may have failed the bet, but where it  _matters_ , I succeeded.” Dashing a tear from his cheek, he flicked it onto the table in front of him. He made a vague, demonstrative gesture that took in the tear, the gold, himself. “This is all just… collateral damage.”  
  
  
  
Scene 2: 3E 428, 2 Rain’s Hand, midday.  
  
“How long are you gonna do this, then?” Tilde was attempting to clean the bar, but Ire’s head was getting in the way.  
  
He didn’t raise it, but he rolled it until she could look him in the bloodshot eye. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” he said.  
  
“You said yourself, you did all this moping already. Can’t you, y'know, skip to the end, seeing as you know the way?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You’re not trying. It’s like working bar, you gotta fake the happy till it’s real, y'know?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well, maybe you need to be doing something!”  
  
“I am doing something.”  
  
“Lying around here flattening the beer with your mood isn’t something.”  
  
“I’m waiting for Cosades to have orders for me.”  
  
“That still isn’t something.”  
  
“I’m working on my Dwemer paper.”  
  
“You’re lying on your Dwemer paper, and I haven’t seen you write one word since yesterday.” She flicked her bar-rag at his nose. “And the one word I saw you write yesterday was 'fuck’.”  
  
“You have a better suggestion?”  
  
“Yes.”  
“Oh gods.”  
“Go on a date–”  
“No.”  
“–with this guy I–”  
“No.”  
“–know who–”  
“No.”  
  
“Lemme finish! He’s called Hecerinde, he’s Altmer, but not Summerset Altmer. His parents were ambassadors or something, he grew up all over, he says. He’s  _really_ nice–”  
  
“NO.”  
  
“OK, look, I wouldn’t ask, but I need someone to butter him up for me a bit. Habasi wants him to come and help secure the South Wall. And he won’t listen to me, 'cause I’m a fat old hag, but you’re all shiny and beautiful and–”  
  
“I said no!!!”  
  
“So, you don’t care if the Camonna Tong kill us all in our beds, that it?”  
  
“Ugh…”  
  
“He’s taller than you, you know.”  
  
Ire finally peeled his head off the bar. “…How  _much_ taller?”  
  
  
  
Scene 3: 3E 428, 4 Rain’s Hand, mid-morning.  
  
“SOTTILDE!” Iriel stormed down the stairs, trying his best to stamp, but thwarted by the noise-muffling properties of Hlaalu yellowstone.  
  
Sottilde, making faces at a bowl of saltrice porridge, groaned and dropped her spoon. “Shor’s balls, Ire, d'you have to? I feel rough as a bear’s arse this morning.”  
  
He stopped, half-way across the room, and pointed at her, rather unnecessarily, at this stage. “I’m very angry with you! If I start crying, as I invariably do when I’m angry, I want you to remember that.”  
  
“What’d I do?”  
  
“You lied to me! Hecerinde already agreed to secure the South Wall!”  
  
“That scuttlehead told you that?”  
  
“Yes, and that you told  _him_  he had to take me out to dinner as part of the deal, because I was a useless pile of sadness, and I needed a pity-fuck to screw the misery out of me!”  
  
“No, I said you’d had a hard time lately, and you could do with someone who’d be nice to you for a change!”  
  
“That’s what I said!”  
“Oh, come off it. So did you?”  
“Did I what?”  
“Get a pity-fuck?”  
“No!!”  
  
She picked up her spoon, and inserted it, pouting slightly, back into her porridge. “I don’t know why I bother trying to do nice things for you.”  
  
“Neither do I!” Ire sagged into a chair. After a while he added, shrugging in resignation: “He  _was_ very nice, though. Dim as a dead glow-worm, but nice.”  
  
“Dim enough to spill what I said to him, the frilly-shirted meathead. Cute though, eh?”  
  
“If you like high-blood white-haired aristo types with more nose than brain.”  
  
“Which you do.”  
  
“I should never have told you about those novels. I find debauching noble boys works better as a fantasy than a reality. Anyway, we had no chemistry whatsoever. And I could tell you’d put him up to it, because he was trying far too hard.”  
  
Iriel adopted a refined, but irrepressibly perky eastern Summerset accent. “Can I get you another drink? You’re sure? No? You’re absolutely sure I can’t offer you another drink before we go? Something from the dessert barrel? Quick blow job in the bathroom?”  
  
“I told you he was nice!”  
  
“You did. I said it was terribly sweet of him, but we’d both only be doing it out of politeness. Then I told him if he really wanted, he could get the bill, and  _he_ said, 'Actually, I was rather hoping you might do that, Tilde said you were pretty flush at the moment!’”  
  
“Well, you are, aren’t you? Anyway, if you change your mind, I highly recommend him. He may be dim, but he knows what he’s doing, that one.”  
  
“Oh gods.”  
“What?”  
“You didn’t.”  
“What?”  
  
“Fuck you, and your fucking sloppy seconds, Tilde!!!” Iriel sprang to his feet and stormed back up the stairs. They didn’t work any better for stamping, the second time around, and the door still didn’t slam properly at all.  
  
  
  
Scene 3a: 3E 428, 4 Rain’s Hand, mid-morning, ten minutes later.  
  
“Drink this.” Sottilde poured a slug of something into a glass, and pushed it into Iriel’s shaking hands. He managed to drain it. She regarded him critically, twisted her lips, and refilled the glass. “And this.” He obeyed her. “Any better?”  
  
When he shook his head, she set her jaw, and retrieved a dusty, black-glassed bottle from beneath the bar. “This one, too then. Careful, it’s kinda burny, but it does the job.”  
  
Ire coughed and wiped his streaming eyes when the liquid hit the back of his throat, but after a minute, he was breathing more slowly, and the trembling was subsiding.  
  
“OK.” Sottilde gently withdrew the glass, and wrapped her hands around his. “Now try telling me again. One o’ them Camonna Tong assholes tried to grab hold of you on the bridge?”  
  
“I… I really don’t think he was Camonna Tong.”  
  
“It’ll be them, trust me. They’ve been sniffin’ round for weeks.”  
  
“Perhaps, but… although he was Dunmer, he didn’t strike me as… gods, I don’t know what he struck me as.”  
  
“I’m glad he didn’t strike you at all! It’s crawling with those Tong creeps out there lately, wiping their 'orrible little eyes all over me every time I go for a wander. I’ve had to start changing my shifts, just to avoid 'em.” She glanced towards the stairs and shivered, drained of her usual bravado. “I hate it. I know they’re gonna do something, but I don’t know what. I’m at the point where I just want 'em to get it over with.”  
  
Ire was barely listening, eyes unfocused. “He… his voice was so… he knew my name. He said that he knew me, and he… they… had been watching me. He said he was a Sleeper, one among thousands.”  
  
“Lotta people do sleep, I hear. It’s a popular thing. I’m jealous, tell the truth.”  
  
Ire shook his head. “He said things I’d… heard before. In Vivec, and in Ald'ruhn, when I was…”  
  
“It’s the blighted Tong, and they’re just trying to mess with your head. Ignore 'em. Please don’t start on about weird flesheating cults again, 'cause I can’t deal with that shit on top of everything else. Not today. Please?”  
  
She squeezed his hands, and he hesitated, then nodded. “All right.”  
  
  
  
Scene 3b: 3E 428, 4 Rain’s Hand, mid-morning, thirty minutes later.  
  
Iriel, sprawled across a table in a tangle of elbows, watched Sottilde return from her scouting tour of the windows. “Well? Is he still there?”  
  
She grimaced. “Yeah. What is it with you and stalkers? This one’s even rougher looking than your trashbag ex.”  
  
Ire flinched. “Don’t call him that.”  
  
“Who? Trashbag ex?”  
“Yes.”  
“Which bit’m I wrong about? The ex part?”  
“No!”  
  
She patted the coin-purse at her belt, as she sat down. “I got fifty seven little Septims here saying otherwise. Oooh, Tilde, they’re whispering, Iriel got his bony ass pounded over a steam-powered–”  
  
His icy glare alone was enough to interrupt her. “You don’t know the first thing about my sex life beyond whatever goes on in your fevered imagination, so stop being so fucking vulgar about it!”  
  
She snorted. “You? Telling me not to be vulgar?”  
  
“Not everything is your business.”  
  
“OK, fine, maybe that’s not my business, but him hurting you again is my business.” She exhaled. “Trashbags are trashbags, Ire.”  
  
“I’m not going to defend his behaviour, but neither is he. He’s admitted he fucked up, and he’s apologised.”  
  
“Yeah, trashbags all do that. People never change that much, y'know? They say they do, sure, but that’s just to get another ride on the pony.”  
  
For a moment, Ire sat silently chewing on his cheek. Then: “Tilde, if he’s a trashbag, I’m a trashbag. I’ve done horrible things to people, I’ve been selfish and cruel.” His fingers began twitching again, alternately splaying outwards and curling into his palm. “Do you understand what you’re telling me, when you say that people can’t change? How that makes me feel about the entire ongoing trajectory of my existence?”  
  
“Oh, come on Ire, you’re not a trashbag. Trashbags don’t sit around worrying if they’re trashbags, they’re too busy rolling around, spewing trash everywhere and letting other people clean it up.”  
  
“I only know that if I said he didn’t deserve a second chance, I’d be the biggest hypocrite this side of Red Mountain.”  
  
“So why only give him fifty-seven drakes’ worth, then? Why’s the ex part still true, if the trashbag part isn’t?”  
  
He sank further onto the table. “I told you. It’s more complicated than that.”  
  
She groaned. “Only 'cause you  _make_  it more complicated. Listen, I’m gonna go upstairs again, and find nasty things to throw at King Trashbag the Second until he goes away. D'you wanna help? Or d'you wanna give  _him_  fifty-seven drakes’ worth of forgiveness, first, too?”  
  
As she reached the stairs, he called after her. “It was on a desk in a Dwemer workshop, the first time.”  
  
She spun around. “Like how on a desk? D'you mean up against it, or actually on–”  
  
“Stendarr’s mercy, Tilde, do you want me to draw you a picture?” He saw her face, and slid a despairing hand across his eyes. “I’m  _not_  going to draw you a picture.”  
  
“Ah, go on.” She grinned wolfishly. “Could be useful research for my historical novel.”  
  
“Is that what you’re calling it, now?”  
  
“The War of the First Council’s history, innit? If that smarmy bastard over at the Fighter’s Guild can write crap about history, I don’t see why I shouldn’t. Did you read the chapter I gave you?”  
  
A long-suffering sigh. “I did.”  
  
“Well?”  
  
“I really don’t understand the constant fascination with Nerevar, in this country. He seems utterly boring. Or the fixation on his relationship with Voryn Dagoth. Why does nobody write about Dumac, where there’s far more evidence they were actually close, and their story was just as painfully sad? Vivec barely mentions him in his account of the Battle of Red Mountain, as if he’d prefer he never existed at all! I think he was jealous. If you ask me, there should be far more historical appreciation for Dumac, who not only–” He bit off the end of his rant, looking slightly embarrassed. “Also, there’s no 'w’ in 'hortator’.”  
  
“It’s satire, ya scuttlehead!”  
  
“Yes, well. Don’t let the Temple proofread for you, they have no sense of humour.”  
  
  
  
Scene 4: 3E 428, 6 Rain’s Hand, early evening.  
  
“Chirranirr!” Sottilde was yelling up the stairs over the noise of the crowd. “Chirra my love, can you hunt down Arathor for me? The little shit’s absconded with the tip jar again.” She rubbed her eyes and leaned on the wall. “No, not the gold, the actual jar. …Yeah. …Yeah, I know, babe, and I’m sorry, it’s just…” She glanced back at the bar, where an Imperial and a Breton were tossing back cups of greef. “It’s sorta hard for me to escape this place at the moment.”  
  
She crossed the room, squeezing past tables of patrons, snatching up empty drinking vessels as she went. Returning to her workspace behind the bar, she suddenly lurched, stumbled, and lost her cargo to the floor, mugs clattering and glasses smashing. Clinging to the edge of a cupboard, she pressed a hand to her chest, steadying herself.  
  
Then she looked down at Iriel, crouched on the floor with his notepaper on his knees, flinching into the wall from the cacophony around him. Once it had settled, he opened his eyes, and regarded her sadly. “I’m sorry. I forgot my leg was there.”  
  
He helped her sweep up, though her stony silence made it clear this was a small comfort. “I thought you were staying in the back room,” she said, finally. “While we’re all busy out here.”  
  
“Phane’s in there. He’s doing the accounts. He keeps whistling.”  
  
“Whistling.”  
  
“And– and–” He was clinging to the broom handle, sheer desperation in his eyes. “And it’s the staff only room, but I’m not staff, and I know I’m not supposed to be in there, and it’s awkward!”  
  
“Whistling  _and_ awkward. I see.” Sighing, she took pity on him, and let it drop. “There must be somewhere better to write than here,” she begged. “Shit, Tsiya’s place is still empty, no one’d bother you there.”  
  
“If I set one foot inside that house, I’d be off my face on skooma within ten minutes.”  
  
“Look, I know you don’t like writing in the shared dorm, but you can even borrow my room, if you promise not to start going through my drawers!”  
  
He shook his head, agonised. “I’m so sorry, I know I’m in the way, I know I’m causing trouble for you, but I… I can’t be on my own. Please.”  
  
“I know that, babe, but I need to work. Can you at least stay visible, so I don’t trip over you?”  
  
“I’m trying, but sometimes it… just…”  
  
“I don’t know how you can write anything here in the bar.”  
  
He threw his pencil to join the glass-shards in the waste-bucket. “I can’t! But I can’t write anything  _anywhere_ , so–!”  
  
“So go ask your man Bald-ass Damn-telvanni to help.”  
  
“I can’t go to Gnisis, that’s where  _he_  is.”  
  
“Kyne’s tits, Ire.” She raked her hair back, other hand on hip. “Just go and make up with him already. I’ve said my piece, but if it’s what you gotta do–”  
  
“That would defeat the entire object of steering him towards healthier options! Anyway… he doesn’t want me back. All he needed from me was the relief of my forgiveness, and he has that now.”  
  
“Oh, we’re doing this again, now, are we?”  
  
“You know as well as I do that he never really loved me, he just fixated on me as a–”  
  
“I don’t know that! How the blighted shit would I know that, when I’m not him? Why’d you gotta always do this about everyone? Inventing all these reasons why everyone you’ve ever known secretly hates you? Why’d you wanna do that to yourself?”  
  
Someone interrupted, then, wanting a drink, and she went over to serve him with a grin and a cheery remark. The Redguard took his mug of sujamma, and slid her a palmful of gold, with the instruction to get one for herself. Iriel waited silently behind her, as she poured herself a glass of shein. Then she turned to face him, smile melting away.  
  
“What about me? D'you think that about me, too? You wanna stand here and tell me I don’t really love you, do you?”  
  
“Tilde, you love everyone.”  
  
“You think? So it’s meaningless, that it?” She sipped the shein, watching him over the glass.  
  
“No…”  
  
He should have stopped there, and if he’d paid more attention to the shine in her eyes and the tension in her jaw, he would have. Unfortunately…  
  
“…it’s just that you’re fundamentally a happy person, so everything’s simple for you. You don’t have all these problems dragging you down all the time, you can–”  
  
…he didn’t.  
  
She threw her drink in his face. “You blighted bastard. I’m happy, am I? I don’t have problems? Oh, I get it, because happiness is simple. Shallow. Only stupid people are happy, right? Not like you, all deep and complicated and miserable, like the proper intelligent genius type you are.”   
  
She glanced down at the glass in her hand. Pressing her lips together, she set it on the bar, pushing it as far away from her as she could. Then she looked back at Iriel, wine dripping down his nose onto his shirt, as terrified as she’d ever seen him.  
  
“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said, voice breaking. “You’re an idiot, and I love you, but I can’t look at you any more right now. Get out.”  
  
He forced his way blindly through the crowd and went.  
  



	147. threads

The thing about Caius Cosades was that however rude, abrasive, miserable or otherwise unpleasant Iriel’s attitude became, the Spymaster stubbornly refused to fire him. Not only was he still under orders from the Emperor to keep Iriel close, he was well aware of Ire’s frustration, and assumed all bad behaviour on his part was merely an attempt to render himself unemployable.  
  
Unbeknownst to Cosades, Iriel was currently finding the old Imperial’s inability to get rid of him more of a comfort than a curse.

Nothing, however, prevented Cosades from assigning Iriel tasks in order to stop him moping around his house on flimsy pretexts. Lacking official input from the Imperial City, he finally plucked a scroll at random from the Dwemer bowl on his mantelpiece that served as one of his many in-trays. Ire had once heard him refer to it as his “piffling pointless bureaucratic bullshit” bowl.  
  
He glanced at the seal as he ripped it open. “Legion again,” he muttered. “Probably pissed off the local scouts and savants, and need someone to do their thinking for them.” He scanned the text of the letter. “Yes, here we go… they lost a patrol in the Bitter Coast. Stendarr, how do they manage to dress themselves? Request skilled agents… so on and so forth… investigate last known whereabouts…”  
  
He transferred his gaze to Iriel, rigid by the door like a melancholic hatstand. “You like swamps, right? Of course you do. Take this missive and report to whoever sent it. Do what they want, and with any luck, I’ll have something real for you when you get back. Go on, off with you, before you infect me with your gloom, and I get the urge to write poems on dead leaves and drop them off bridges in a long black cloak.”  
  
  
Ire waited until Sottilde was out, before collecting his belongings from the South Wall. Although aching to apologise to her, he considered it a self-serving impulse. She’d be happier if she didn’t have to see him, and he owed her that much, and more. In any case, the strangling vines of tension that twined permanently throughout his chest covered all his words in thorns. He knew he’d only tear new holes into everything.  
  
He attempted what psychological damage control he could. By the time the silt strider he boarded arrived in Ald'ruhn, he was putting the final touches on a new thesis. One arguing that his successful alienation of himself from the final person who might conceivably have still cared about him was, in fact, for the best.  
  
 _I’m severing the last threads tying me here. As soon as I finish my Dwemer research paper, I can be gone. Finishing it will be easier, now. Perhaps that’s what was blocking me, they were blocking me, the knowledge that once I’d written it, I’d be leaving them. Now, that doesn’t matter.  
  
Yes, of course it hurts. It always hurts, cutting things off, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right decision. Pruning, to encourage growth. Removal of dead, diseased branches. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary, even when those branches are you. Especially when. It’s not about you, it’s about the future of the whole garden, the health of the soil. It’s for the greater good. It’s the responsible thing to do.  
_  
He hadn’t told Sottilde what had happened in Sadrith Mora. How, unable to bear the outpouring of joy at Bodu’s return, or contribute to the general celebration, he had retreated to his attic, intending to work on his translation. Considering his state of mind, it’s unlikely he would have made much progress in a soundproof isolation chamber, but from Iriel’s point of view, it had been easier to blame the guar on the floor below. And the bellowing Orc riding it up and down. And the shrieking Bosmer, riding the Orc riding the guar. Silence spells really didn’t touch the sides of this one.  
  
Reluctant to aim his frustrations at Bodu or Pasha, he had picked a fight with Celegorn, instead. Cel must have been waiting for a target himself, because he immediately launched into a hysterical tirade about Bodu’s broken legs, and how dare Iriel, personally, allow this to happen. Private guilt was soon being translated into public screaming on both sides, at which point Pasha began keening, and Bodu burst into tears.  
  
That was when Iriel found out about the glass-fronted box inside Cel’s head, labelled, “In Case of Someone Making Bodu Cry, Break Everything”. The box had a curving knife in it, which slipped into Cel’s fingers like a flicker of silk, and Ire’s hands crackled with sparks in response.  
  
Helende had descended upon them, a war-goddess forged of righteous fury, white-gold ice and a striped dressing gown. Directing Cel to comfort Bodu, she had dragged Iriel out of the room. “Cel can’t help being Cel,” she’d hissed at him, “but I expected better from you.”  
  
At this point, Iriel had thrown what even he, afterwards, had to admit was one of the most indefensibly childish tantrums of his life. Helende had withstood it silently, lips compressed, arms folded.  
  
When he finally paused for breath, she said: “I’m sorry you feel that way. Whatever you might think, I, and many others here, care about you very much. That said, if it’s peace you’re looking for, you’re out of luck. Bodu’s welfare is our top priority right now, and that means keeping him here, with his family, while I bring in healers we can trust. I need all my people working as a team on this. Meaning, if you’re compelled to make everything about you, perhaps it’d be best for everyone if you left. Just until things calm down, here. If your Dwemer project is really so important to you, I daresay there are quieter places for you to complete it.”  
  
I’m sure it’s clear by this point which sentences fell immediately through the cracks of Iriel’s brain, vanishing from his consciousness forever, and which ones hovered malevolently over him like cliff racers as he packed his bag.  
  
And now he was at the other end of the week, leaving yet another city, and another fractured relationship. Arriving in Ald'ruhn, he glared moodily out of the silt strider across the domed Redoran roofs. For once, the sky was clear, and he could see the whole place, from the immense shell of the Skar to the familiar corrugated hump of the Mages Guild. Reminding him of yet another severed connection.  
 _  
That… I can’t claim that was responsible, necessary cutting. I betrayed Anarenen because I was a shitty, selfish sugartooth, and I needed the money. And now… I don’t need money, but… the rest’s all still true. And I’m still hurting the people who try to help me. Because… it wasn’t only about the money, was it? Be honest, you narcissistic dickworm, on some level, you enjoy it. Burning bridges, sabotaging relationships. There’s still a brutal sort of freedom in making other people stop caring about you. To no longer have the constant fear looming over you, of when they’re going to realise their mistake. You know it’s going to happen, why not get it over with and save yourself the stress and wasted effort? Give them a reason you can control, instead of one you can’t.  
  
Sometimes I wonder if Reu felt this way about me. Certainly, I have no right to judge him. I never want to see him again, but… is this forgiveness?  
  
_ _I don’t want Anarenen’s forgiveness. I only want to make it right, nameless and faceless. A Bal Molagmer, acting with black hands.  
  
  
_ Leaving the strider port, Iriel turned his back on Ald'ruhn, heading through the city walls towards the Imperial fort on the southern side. He was looking for one Champion Raesa Pullia, and it was a long time before he finally found her office. The Buckmoth Legion Fort was near-empty. Only a bare handful of bowmen could be spotted on the walls, and inside, all was silence. Occasionally, Ire would catch sight of a paper-laden clerk or robed healer disappearing down a corridor, but they always vanished before he manage a request for directions.  
  
At the top of the last tower, he found her, hunched behind a desk piled high with scrolls and papers. Writing furiously, brows knitted in concentration. She’d propped the door open, but he knocked on it anyway, and she looked up, dark circles of sleeplessness and stress surrounding her brown eyes. “What?”  
  
She took in his appearance: the ash-stained leather boots, the greenish oilskin cloak Cosades had lent him in preparation for the rainy Bitter Coast. The hair that mostly stayed tied back on one side of his head, but less so on the other, due to uneven application of fireballs. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you lost? I’m extremely busy, so you’ll have to get someone else to–”  
  
“Caius sent me. Cosades, I mean.” He spent a few moments rifling in his bag for the letter, sweating under her gimlet gaze, before giving up. He shrugged apologetically, though it was unclear if the apology related to his lack of documentation, or his existence as a whole. “I was told to help you with… you know. Whatever. Things in swamps.”  
  
She was still staring at him, perhaps hoping if she did it long and hard enough, he might turn into somebody else. “You’re… a messenger?” she said, finally. “The special agents are downstairs? How many are there?” A brisk shake of her head. “Never mind, tell them I’ll be down to brief them in a few moments, as soon as I’ve–”  
  
“Um. Sorry, I think there’s been a, um… I mean… I suppose I do technically count as a special agent, in that I’m a Blade, but I’m not a very, um,  _special_  one. It’s all right for me to tell you that, isn’t it? You already know Caius, so… um… anyway. I was under the impression this was a recon mission. To find some lost troops?”  
  
Realisation was dawning. “They  _only_  sent you?” Her face paled and tightened, as if she were made of extremely fast-drying clay. “Didn’t they get my second dispatch?” Her voice was strained and hoarse. “This isn’t a search any more; I know where my soldiers are! Dead! This is now an extermination!”  
  
She examined him again, more slowly, this time. “You’re, what… a mage?” She sounded dubious. She pursed her lips, staring at his oilskin, as if it might cover a multitude of hidden weapons. “An… assassin?” she hazarded, with even less conviction. Ire flipped the cloak over his shoulder, revealing his standard uniform of plain shirt and pants in drab neutrals, topped with his (worse for wear, but irrationally beloved) blue sequinned scarf. She wrinkled her nose, admitting defeat. “What  _are_  you?”  
  
Iriel was overcome by a rush of perverse delight at his own illegibility. “I’m afraid my methods are top secret and highly classified,” he told her, trying not to giggle. He made an ambiguous gesture in his own direction. “All this is merely my cover identity.” It didn’t even feel like a lie.  
  
“Well.” There was resignation in her voice as well as resolve, the sound of someone deciding to take what they can get, and make the most of it. “Pray Talos you’re a whole lot more formidable than you look, then. Because if you had received my second report, you’d know that a trooper made it back from the mission. The only one to survive, all the others killed by monstrous creatures they encountered in a cavern, along the coast from Gnaar Mok.”  
  
“Monstrous creatures?”  
  
“Creatures or cultists. The trooper wasn’t too clear on that point. He was swollen, disfigured and completely out of his wits. He had corprus disease.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“We only recognised him from what was left of his uniform. He didn’t respond to questions, only babbled, as if in a dream. He died almost immediately, our healers were powerless. I’ve never seen anything like it before, it… it sure wasn’t pretty.” Her gaze dropped for a moment, her mouth a tight, thin line.  
  
“You’re Altmer,” she said, next. “Means you’re resistant to disease, right?”  
  
“Um. Theoretically?”  
  
“You’re the best hope I’ve got then.” She consulted a paper on her desk. “Through his ravings, we got something else out of the trooper. The leader of these cultists, this half-man, half-monster… called himself Dagoth Gares.”  
  
“Dagoth…”  
  
“Right. He told the soldier he was letting him live, so that he could carry a message. That the Sleeper awakes, the Sixth House has risen, and Dagoth Ur is Lord. That mean anything to you?”  
  
Iriel swallowed, and drew a shallow breath, but before he could reply, she continued anyway. “I’ll tell you what it means to me.” She locked her pupils onto his. “It means there is a base of violent, diseased cultists right next to a civilian settlement! It means that bastard killed my men! It means your orders are to find this Dagoth Gares, and eliminate him.”  
  
He said little else to Raesa Pullia, didn’t argue, or resist the stained maps of patrol routes she pushed into his hands. He merely, on his way out through the courtyard, shoved them into an empty crate. Began trudging through the ash towards Ald'ruhn, planning to get the strider back to Balmora. He’d explain to Caius that there had been a mistake, that he was a scholar, not a one-elf death squad, and this was someone else’s responsibility.  
  
Navigating a ridge, he… realised he’d been here before. He recognised the stones. Looking up, the Ghostfence glowed blue to the east, battling the setting sun on the opposite horizon.  
  
 _It was here, we were here. When I made him leave, that first time, when I reminded him of his mission, deliberately triggered his guilt, so that he’d stop trying to take care of me.  
_  
Sudden longing tore through his chest, and he stopped walking.  
  
 _I sent him to his death. And he knew that. He’d never admit it, but he knew all along what was bound to happen up there. He knew he wasn’t strong enough. But he went anyway. He didn’t have to. Someone else should have gone. The Tribunal, the Armigers, a whole army of Ordinators. It wasn’t his responsibility, but he made everything his responsibility. Made me his responsibility, because then there’d be something to tie him here, a thread to cling to, and I mocked him for it, and I cut it, again and again. I tried to give him somewhere more secure to anchor himself, this time. But now there are no threads left to hold me. I’ll soon be gone, and I’ll never know if it worked.  
_  
He leaned against a boulder, head swimming.  
  
 _I can’t stop pushing people away. Although I love them, because I love them, because I know what I’m like, and I wouldn’t wish myself on them. And I see my ugliness thrown into such sharp relief by their goodness, and I know they see it, too. I know that any affection they bear for me is being slowly eroded, and I can’t bear the shame.  
  
The thing is… if dragging people down with me is selfish, then pushing them away ought to be the opposite, ought to be an altruistic act, and I pretend it is, but it’s not. It’s an isolationist martyrdom I pray might let me claw back a shred of pride. But it won’t, it can’t, I’ll only fall back into the Pit, and I know that too, but at least I know I deserve that. And I never think what happens to the people I push away, because I assume no one could possibly need me. So I burn out the bridge out from under them, and never ask how deep the water is, or whether they can swim. I’m still doing it, and I can’t stop.  
  
_Beyond the Ghostfence, all was ash-filled clouds and blighted shadows, the peak smothered in morbid red smog.  
  
 _I’m walking in circles again. Round and round the mountain, up a little, down a lot, getting nowhere and learning nothing. But when the only thing at the top of the mountain is death, why climb at all? And yet, you still die, even if you never reach the top. Is it better to climb straight up there and be done? Does it matter how long you spend on the slopes, how high you get, before… oh fuck these fucking stupid metaphors!!!  
  
_ _Stop thinking, start acting. But what action, Ire? Retreat back home, to avoidance and apologies, to self-loathing, inertia, and finding new ways to disappoint people? Head for Ald'ruhn, and buy something to get completely off your fucking face, so you don’t have to think? Or choose the path of heroic stupidity? I’ve watched him try all of them, and I know which he valued most. I have no doubt which path he would take, in my place.  
  
_ _What’s more, I understand, now.  
  
_ _Who cares if it’s stupidity or heroism, who cares if it’s achievable? It’s still better than walking the same worn-out circles your entire life, until you die anyway. If you can’t stand the person you are, borrow someone else’s clothes, and fake it till it’s real. What is there to be afraid of, when you’ve got nothing to lose? Nothing you care about, anyway._  
  
Iriel sometimes felt the great turning points of his life were less about big decisions, and more about fuck-it moments. Times when his frustration would build to such excruciating levels, that it could only be relieved by acts that forced a change in his situation, even a negative, self-destructive one. Throwing himself off a cliff, because the bottom of the cliff promised to be a different place from the top.  
  
He recognised the familiar gravitational pull in his brain, saw that the path he was currently on led towards the edge of yet another ravine. The trouble was, so did all the obvious alternatives, stones worn smooth by all the times he’d reeled down them before. What happened next was only a question of which ravine.  
  
He clenched his fists, a wild strain of rebellion pulsing through his heart. Perhaps he couldn’t change himself, but there were still choices he could make. He couldn’t break free of the past, but he could break free of the familiar. He couldn’t fix what he’d ruined, but he could make strange, doomed gestures of invisible, romantic tribute.  
  
Determined to fall down someone else’s cliff this time, Iriel made a sharp left turn into the wilderness.  
  



	148. blind

The blond Nord was bounding along the road at an astonishing speed, considering his wrists and ankles were bound with twine. Apart from a fair quantity of smeared blue face-paint, he was completely naked. He came to a juddering, panting halt a few feet away from Iriel, who was already regretting the decision to drop his invisibility spell.  
  
“Stranger!” The Nord grinned broadly, or at least, bared the vast majority of his teeth, air whistling through a gap in the centre as he struggled for breath. “Today’s your lucky day!”  
  
Iriel, stone-faced, looked him up and down. “No.”  
  
“You get to play a part in the glorious vengeance of the famous hero, Hlormar–”  
“No.”  
“–against a festering witch, who–”  
“No.”  
“–robbed me blind and left me for dead!”  
  
“N–” Ire paused. “Really? What happened?”

Hlormar threw his head back and flared his nostrils, the whites of his eyes flashing. “Treacherous harridan! I met her on the road, and we agreed to share the journey. Seduced me, she did, snared me with her eyes as we walked. But when we camped, and I went to take what she offered, she revealed the witch inside! Cast a spell on me! I couldn’t so much as blink!”  
  
“Ah, yes. I understand, now.” Iriel nodded, then took a step back. “No.” He began walking away.  
  
“Piss-blooded coward!” the Nord roared after him. “You’d leave me here to rot?”  
  
“I’m sure you can manage to get to civilisation, if you try. You seem to be doing quite well, considering.”  
  
“At least untie me, you villainous cretin! These hills teem with savage creatures, and that harpy stole my axe, Cloudcleaver! A blade of legend, left to me by my father!”  
  
Iriel twisted his mouth, dubiously. “All right. On condition that you head straight for the closest town, and forget this whole revenge idea.” He took his knife, and approached the Nord.  
  
Hlormar stood quietly until he felt the bindings loosen around his wrists. Then, growling low in his throat, he brought both fists up into Iriel’s chin. With so little room to swing, the blow wasn’t what it could have been, but it still sent Ire reeling backwards. “Elves and witches, all in league!” he heard Hlormar roar. “Debase the honour of a noble son of the sky? I’ll tear the entrails from the lot of you!!”  
  
Through a blur of pain, shock and the tang of blood where he’d bitten his tongue, Iriel saw Hlormar winding up for a real punch. He was already casting, though, survival instincts honed and automatic. When Hlormar’s fist whistled towards his face, it didn’t connect. Neither did the next blow, the Blind spell distorting his vision. Ire, by now three paces to the side, watched him flail and swing in impotent rage, finally forgetting his legs were still bound, lurching forwards and toppling over.  
  
He could have done something less lethal, but Iriel, shaking and sweat-drenched, was through offering the benefit of the doubt. He unloaded lightning spells into the prone Nord until he stopped moving, then kept going until he was out of magicka. Once his heartrate slowed, and he was left standing over a naked corpse, it was unexpected - and slightly alarming - how little he cared. _  
  
Perhaps I should have paralysed him, talked to him, explained why he was wrong. And perhaps he would have pretended to listen, and carried on attacking people, while thinking himself a hero.  
  
Is it true that some people never learn, and can’t be taught to change? Or… what if they could, but only at the cost of many other people, who all have to expend pain and effort in order for one violent brute to learn their lesson? Is all their suffering really worth it? How much is too much?  
  
_ _Even one person’s pain. Rabinna. How could anything I learned ever be worth what I did to her?  
_ _  
_He left the body in the road. Still suspecting he ought to feel guilty, but never quite managing it. He couldn’t help thinking the world really was a better place without Hlormar in it.  
  
Then again, perhaps his brain just needed to save all his guilt for the guar he kept seeing, happily munching on grass throughout West Gash, delivering paroxysms of anguished recollection each time he saw their placid, reptilian grins.  
  
  
The next day he found a cave, in the rocky hills that marked the end of the western scrublands and the beginning of the coastal swamps. There were fresh prints in the mud outside, some booted, some clawed, some padded.  
  
He stared at the entrance, torn. His instinctive reaction was, naturally, terrified avoidance. The notion that he was in any way equipped to assault a group of slavers was ludicrous to him. And yet, he knew in his gut that was an excuse. His spells were powerful. He’d been in countless battles, just… not like this, not alone. The idea felt vertiginous and impossible.  
  
He was surprised, genuinely surprised, when he realised the most powerful thought in his mind, the overriding compulsion he would be forced to obey, and to live with, afterwards, wasn’t the terror. It was the vision of the slaves, the people who might be in there, chained in the dark, waiting.  
  
 _Rabinna. Reeh-Jah. I’m a piece of shit who could never be worth their suffering, but… if I do nothing, if I’ve learned nothing… then their suffering was worth nothing, too._  
  
His fear increased tenfold, because now it encompassed not only the idea of fighting the slavers, but the realisation he was going to do it. Walking away was even more impossible than the alternative.  
  
It was easier than he expected. He found that if he remained invisible right up until casting the Paralyse spell, he could follow up with a volley of shock spells that caused death before the paralysis wore off. Most of them never even saw him, let alone tried to attack him.  
  
 _It’s probably dishonourable or something. Unfortunately, I care about success, not honour. The lives of these slaves are worth far more than any honour I might pretend to have._  
  
When it was done, he only stayed long enough to slip the key through the bars of the slave pen, and mention the rowing boats tethered in the underground stream. Pulling the hood of his oilskin cloak over his head, he vanished back into the darkness.  
  



	149. home

He should have kept the maps. When Iriel hit the coast, he had no idea if he was north or south of Gnaar Mok, never mind anywhere near the patrol route. In drizzling rain, he teetered on top of a rotting log, squinting through the vines as netch loomed in and out of the mist like unwanted thoughts. Finally, he made out Dwemer towers to the north, and, moving closer, recognised Aleft, the ruin he and Julan had attempted together. Gnaar Mok must lie beyond, and hopefully he could sleep, eat and get better directions.

As he was leaving the sparse village store, the rain began to fall in earnest. The few villagers he could see were even less keen to be interrogated than he was keen to interrogate them, but eventually he cornered a Bosmer man by the docks.  
  
“Ilunibi,” he muttered, avoiding Iriel’s eyes. “Old sea cave, up by Khartag Point, to the north. Most caves round here are full o’ smugglers, but not that one. At least…” His voice darkened. “…not any more.”  
  
“Do you know who  _is_  in there?”  
  
“No. At least…” he tinted his voice with still deeper shades of foreboding, “…not any more.”  
  
Iriel glared at him, rain dripping from his hood. “Would you please just explain what you mean?”  
  
With tar-crusted fingers, the man slowly pushed his lank blonde fringe out of his colourless grey eyes. “I mean,” he said, “that some o’ the folks down  _there_ used to be folks from  _here_. Every Dunmer as used to live here is there, now. First they’d talk of strange dreams, and we’d find ‘em wandering the swamp at night. And then… one by one, they all went into that cave. What comes out, time to time… I don’t reckon I know who they are at all. Steer clear of Ilunibi, traveller.”  
  
Despite the warning, Iriel found the village far more stressful than the soothing, botanical delights of the Bitter Coast. The cave could wait until morning, but he elected to spend his evening poking around the nearby swamp, rather than sitting in Gnaar Mok’s tiny inn, which somehow felt damper and dirtier than the muddiest marshland outside it.  
  
He had, in fact, almost decided to forget about the cave. The journey had burned off a proportion of his nihilistic despair, and wiser thoughts were currently prevailing. He could get a boat up to Gnisis from here. He could swallow his pride, and ask Baladas for help. He could…  _definitely not do anything ethically or emotionally counter-productive, and even IF Tilde was right about certain things, it doesn’t change any of the other fundamental things I know to be true…_   _but_ …  _sometimes it feels as if I know things, but later it turns out I only felt them, and my feelings were wrong, and… what if…_  
  
Well. He could burn that bridge when he came to it.

Water walking across the surface of the swamp, peace itself seemed to rise from the water and diffuse into him. The sun was falling into the sea, spreading warm gold across the water, copper-coating the trees. After a while, he dropped the spell, to feel the spongy give of the moss beneath his boots, hear the creaking of the rickety plank bridges. He pushed back his hood, letting the raindrops splash softly on his cheeks and eyelids. He knelt to gently unroll fern fronds with his fingers, and brush the satin moistness of mushroom caps. He inhaled the glorious complexities of the air: fresh, vibrant growth mingling with dark, peaty decay. He… saw a girl.  
  
She was Dunmer, her skin a deep, slate grey, her hair a brilliant red in the sunset. Like the Nord of a few days ago, she was naked, standing thigh-deep in the murky water. He called out to her several times before she finally turned towards him. When she did, her expression was distant, but ecstatic. “At the lonely hour of midnight, I fly when stars are weeping,” she slurred. “Beneath the echo of souls, my spirit sleeping.”  
  
“Are you from the village? Who are you?”  
  
“I dream dreams, soul of the Sixth House, flesh of Lord Dagoth.”  
  
“You, um. You really should go home.”  
  
She shook her head. “Our home is gone, stolen from under us as we slept. But my Lord will bid all sleepers awaken, and return us to our home. Resdayn will be ours once more, cleansed of the stains of false gods and foreign rule.”  
  
“Who is your lord? Do you mean Dagoth Ur, or someone here? Where is he?”  
  
“Beneath Red Mountain, Lord Dagoth sleeps.”  
  
“Listen, you’re being brainwashed. You have to wake up.”  
  
“Indeed, it is the Hour of Wakening. And when he wakes, he shall come forth in his glory, and his enemies shall scatter like dust. The Sixth House is risen, and Dagoth is its glory.”  
  
“I know it doesn’t feel like it to you, but you’re in great danger. Please trust me. If you come away from here, your mind will clear, and–”  
  
She smiled sadly, and patted his arm. “No, outlander. You are the one in great danger, for when Lord Dagoth rises, this will be no place for you. Take what you can, and leave now, for the day of reckoning is at hand.”  
  
He thought about trying to get her back to Gnaar Mok, but aside from the social, physical and possibly legal complications of dragging nude teenagers through swamps, he wasn’t sure it would achieve anything. He took another approach. “Where is this cave, Ilunibi? Can you show me?”  
  
The girl’s thin face brightened. “Even an n'wah like you cannot deny your Lord! Do you wish to make your submission to the Father of the Mountain?” She beamed, and seized his hand. “My Lord spoke truly, all shall greet him, as flesh or as dust!”  
  
She led him north, to a knot of arthritic, lichen-rashed trees that barely remained upright in the half-solid soil. Swampwater blended to seawater around them, and the rocky cliff of Khartag Point towered above. The last rays of the sun showed a gaping wound beneath the cliff, fringed with exposed roots, endless water pouring down buried rocks into endless darkness.  
  
He waited, half-expecting her to attack him, push him over the edge. She only smiled. Her frail body was covered in bruises and scrapes. Then she moved - not to attack, but to scuttle into the cleft like a spider, vanishing silently into the black, more tumbling than climbing. He was left alone, at the lip of the void.  
  
Now that he was here, right up against the prospect of entering a Sixth House base, he felt remarkably calm. They were only people. Disturbed people, true, and he was usually terrified of people on general principle, but… they weren’t faceless. They were victims, like the mind-controlled slaves, the bound undead. All he needed to do was remain invisible until he found the cult leader, and hopefully, as with Llaren Terano, the spell might be broken with his death. He’d done it before, and he could do it again.  
  
Not pushed, not falling or jumping, but in voluntary, carefully spell-controlled descent, Iriel went over the edge.  
  



	150. monsters

Iriel had never been frightened of the dark, even as a child. Firionwe claimed to be, fussing endlessly over blowing out the candle, whenever they read scary stories together. From Ire’s perspective, her squeaking, giggling glee didn’t resemble anything he recognised as fear. But then, he didn’t understand the appeal of the stories, either, of deliberately inducing terror as a form of entertainment. It wasn’t as  _escapist_  for him as it apparently was for her.  
  
Compared to Firi, though, he barely found most of the tales frightening, something Iriel put down to him getting everything backwards, as usual. Still… whatever the storybooks said, he’d never encountered monsters in the dark, only in broad daylight. In the dark, you could hide from them, comforted and safe.

Levitating down into the Ilunibi sea cave, the sound of water on rock crashing through him, he wasn’t sure what this darkness held, what level of fear was warranted. Or to what extent ‘monster’ was a fair description of anyone involved.  
  
For a long time, as he descended, he saw nothing. Even a Night Eye spell can’t do much with only a black cliff face to work with. Then the echoes changed, his feet met slick stone, and the cavern distended around him. There was something bloated and strained about the cave walls, as if the pressure and intensity of the putrid, sulphurous air might be the cause of their formation.  
  
Iriel considered this geologically improbable. Although it was still more plausible than the other (im)possibility that kept slinking into his mind as he switched his levitation for invisibility, and began creeping down the largest of the marble-smooth, black-veined passages. That he was in the stomach of some huge, horribly diseased creature, forcing his way ever deeper into its necrotic guts.  
  
It was hard not to think about disease. The famous Altmeri resistance to infection was a point of national pride, in Summerset, the result of millennia of eugenic optimisation. Some races, Ire’s Restoration lecturer claimed, possessed a bizarre biological system whereby immunity to disease was largely constructed on the fly, via exposure. Assuming they survived it, of course. How primitive, to be forced to constantly correct errors in your own blood, through a lifetime of suffering! A lifetime so short that by the time of your death, you could only ever hope to achieve a fraction of the protection that all Altmer received at birth, as part of their innate cultural heritage. How tragic, how woefully inefficient.  
  
Illness, while hardly unheard of among Altmer, was something to be embarrassed by, perhaps concealed with a trip, or passed off as a magical curse from a jealous rival. In children, it was evidence of a poor parental match, gossip-fodder for the neighbours. “Randuil’s girl has the bittercough again. I told you those brown eyes showed a mannish strain in her blood. My Eantir’s never been ill a day in his life, you know.”  
  
Under pressure, Viatrix had admitted that all known cases of corprus transmission had involved blood-to-blood contact, and most of the Temple’s precautions were based more on hysterical paranoia than hard evidence. Still, Iriel knew it wouldn’t do to be foolish. Natural resistance was one thing, but he also had resist blight potions and a Recall point outside. Furthermore, he only intended to fight one person in here, and shock spells could be thrown from range, not even breaking the skin.  
  
As he penetrated deeper, the sound of the waterfall faded, and he began to hear them.  
  
“Please. Please. Where are you, Lord? Please.”  
  
Cracked and broken words, tearing themselves from throats no longer shaped for speech.  
  
“We cannot hear you. Please. Speak to us. Please.”  
  
Occasionally, a voice would swell to a peak of agony, but far more often, they were quiet. Whispers on the edge of hearing, from the edge of a fractured consciousness. Prayers, carried on the rancid air, from dreamers seeking readmittance to a once-shared dream.  
  
He didn’t see the red-haired girl again. The first cultist he came upon looked to be formed of dry ashes, ancient and wizened - though whether he had been that way before he entered the cave, Iriel couldn’t say. He stood, blindly pawing at a cluster of rocks in front of him, oblivious to all else. As Ire passed, he made out the contents of the man’s dusty, brittle monologue.  
  
“…ables, the chairs, the tables. All confused. We hear the words and must speak them. We take them, and arrange them, but still, they will not be quiet.” He tugged on the largest rock, his shrunken features a nexus of frustration. “No, no, no, no… Not right. No, no, no…”  
  
Ire encountered others, in time. Lost in themselves, staring, humming and muttering. He never felt threatened by them, indeed, he wondered if he needed the invisibility spell at all.  
  
The deeper tunnels were flooded with stinking brine. His spells held him clear, but there were narrow places, where the level rose high enough that he had to crawl to get through. Clawing forwards, squeezed between the smooth ridges of the tunnel roof and warm, salty-thick fluid, inches from his face, he felt like a parasite. Remembered reading about a certain fungus, that infected insects with its spores. Driving them mad from within, until the fungus burst from the bug’s head, killing it instantly.  _I have to keep going until I reach the brain._  
  
Carved stone steps led upwards out of the mire, flanked by braziers of coals, and he knew he was close. There were small, red candles, marking out a path. Crooning moans floated eerily from side-tunnels, but he never saw who made them, only caught glimpses of massive, humped shapes, shuffling into the shadows. He got the impression they saw him, but were… holding back? Steering clear? Their reasons, if they even had them, were opaque.  
  
The candles led him down a long tunnel. At the end, he saw a chamber, dominated by a hulking, red statue, surrounded by more braziers. A shrine. As he moved closer, details emerged: a black stone table. A row of bells, ranging in size, and a hammer to strike them. A figure, kneeling in the centre of the room, eyes closed in prayer.  
  
He had the shock spell ready, but he hesitated. Not only because the elven man was unarmed and radiating tranquillity, but because he was shockingly beautiful. His face was long, sculpted and elegant, the bridge of his nose a perfect line down the centre. In the light of the braziers, his skin was golden bronze, deeper and richer than Iriel’s own colour. Long, silky black hair fell loose to his waist, and he wore a simple grey robe.  
  
Iriel was positive he hadn’t made a sound, but as he watched, the man rose smoothly to his feet. He opened his eyes, looked directly at Iriel, and smiled.  
  
“The Sixth House welcomes you, honoured guest.  I am known as Dagoth Gares, priest of Ilunibi Shrine. We of the Sixth House have long awaited this meeting. Pray, how would you prefer that we address you? Iriel of Lillandril? Or should that be… Lord Indoril Nerevar?”  
  
Ire was frozen, but his throat loosened enough to choke out: “I’d prefer that you not address me at all!”  
  
“Why? Because you came here to kill me? I am grieved, but I understand. This is confusing for you. You are afraid. But I hope to relieve your fears. Truly, you have nothing to fear from me. My Lord has informed me of your coming, and wishes me to treat you with the greatest respect.”  
  
“You’re the leader, here? You seem… very different to the others.”  
  
“It is difficult, for those new to the mysteries of our Lord. Many are confused, for a time, until their vision is cleared. The Sleepers and Dreamers are newly come to Lord Dagoth, and not yet blessed with his power. Many, sadly, do not survive this holy gauntlet. But I, and the other Children of His Flesh, we are deep in the heart of his mysteries. Our bodies swell to contain his glory, and to yield the rich sacraments of our Lord’s feasts.”  
  
“But you don’t look… I mean…”  
  
“Ah, yes.” The bronze lips curled into a smile. “My Master has lent me this form. One he himself wore, long ago. He wondered if, perhaps, you might find it familiar.”  
  
Ire blinked slowly, processing the implication. “ _Dagoth Ur_  thinks I’m Nerevar?”  
  
As he drifted towards Iriel, Gares’ hands moved in slow, synchronised gestures, every fingertip precisely choreographed as they fanned outwards, then convened to rest upon his sternum. “My Lord sees deeply, but the voyage of a soul is a deeper mystery still. Yet he trusts in the prophecies of Azura, and he faithfully awaits the return of his old friend, as he did so long ago. He observes all those who walk the path of the Nerevarine, and he extends the hand of friendship. Each time hoping that the one who was dearer than a brother to him will stretch out his hand in return, that he will find his friend’s smile in a stranger’s eyes.”  
  
With darting swiftness, Gares caught Iriel’s hand between his. His grip was inescapable, or at least… Ire was unable to pull away. Gares’ hands were silk-smooth, blood-warm, and they held Ire safe as a secret, firm as an oath. He led Iriel towards a long, dark-stone table, lit with candles, and Ire, heartbeat thundering in his ears, let him. When Gares, having gently steered him into a chair, finally slipped his fingers free, Ire felt a pang of loss.  
  
“What do you want from me?” Iriel had intended it as a demand, but by the time it left his lips, it had drained into the husky whisper of pillow talk. Horrified, he blushed, magnifying his problems.  _Of all the ways I predicted I’d screw this up…!!  
_  
The perfect host, Gares pretended not to notice his guest’s embarrassment. Taking an engraved stone carafe from the table, he poured a darkly fragrant liquid into two goblets, and slid one before Iriel. “My Lord wishes only to know you better,” he said. “To meet you, face to face, and seek shards of the past.”  
  
“And then? If he decides I  _am_  Nerevar?”  
  
The smile again. “To discover how we might win you.” He took a slow sip from his glass, holding Ire in his shining gaze. “To bring you to Red Mountain, and share his dream with you. To reassure you, as to our aims and goals. To learn what you desire most, that he might provide it, and share the bliss of it with you.”  
  
Iriel said nothing for a while, watching Gares drink. Then he said: “If you’ve been watching all those who claim to be Nerevar, then you’ve been watching him, as well. Julan.”  
  
A nod.  
  
“What would you offer him? Would you offer to overthrow the Empire and the Tribunal, to raise up the Ashlander people, restore their lands and power, return everything they’ve lost, vindicate them as the true heirs of Morrowind?”  
  
“All this, joyfully, and more. You see, these things are already part of my Master’s dream for this land. Truly, that one is already closely aligned with our vision, if he can be induced to see it.”  
  
“You think he would join you?”  
  
“More easily than some, perhaps.”  
  
“More easily than me.” Ire’s fingers tightened around each other in his lap. “I don’t want anything.”  
  
He felt the bleak truth of it as he spoke, but Gares raised his eyebrows in mild amusement. “Indeed? Then why did you come here?”  
  
“To… to… stop…”  
  
Gares placed his hand upon the table between them, palm up. His expression was yearning, and filled with pain. “My Lord dared to hope,” he said softly, “that you might want his forgiveness.”  
  
Ire stared at the hand. Then he sprang up violently, knocking over his chair. “No,” he said shakily, panic seizing him, “no. I don’t want forgiveness, I… only…” His hands lit up, making the red darkness around him swarm with white sparks.  
  
Gares didn’t move. “You would enter this sanctuary as a welcome guest, and attack me?” he asked, voice smooth as oil. “I am unarmed, and I shall offer you no violence, no provocation. My hands and heart bear promises of friendship and shared power, yet you would still strike me down? This is the form of your honour?”  
  
“Fuck honour!” Ire sent the shockball into the perfect, golden face. Gares flinched and inhaled sharply, but made no attempt to defend himself. When he didn’t move, Iriel hurled another at him, screaming. “I don’t want honour, or power, or forgiveness! I only want to make you stop all this vile nonsense!”  
  
Twitching from the spell, Dagoth Gares slid unsteadily upright from his chair, and held both golden-bronze hands out to Iriel across the table. He was smiling. “My lord Nerevar. It truly  _is_ you. Welcome back.”  
  
At this point, Iriel gave up on shock spells, and threw the table at him. With a mixture of telekinesis and unbridled rage, he yanked the entire stone edifice up from the floor, and slammed it into Gares’ chest, hurling him backwards, then downwards, as Ire, running at him, pushing with spells and hands and all his might, crushed him against the ground, ribs cracking audibly. Lost in momentum, Ire careened over the table as it fell, tangling with Gares’ arms and clutching hands, candlesticks falling, goblets spilling, everything collapsing into chaos and clutter.  
  
Iriel’s eyes refocused on the dark cave floor, everything shaken out of him. Sucking in air, he tried to roll, but something was pinning his arms. He twisted his head, and came face to face with Dagoth Gares. The priest’s chest was trapped beneath the table, but his arms were wrapped tightly around Ire, and he was still smiling.   
  
His breath in Ire’s nostrils was tainted with blood and a foul sweetness, like rotting fruit.  
  
“Thank you,” Gares croaked, his voice decaying into a hollow rasp as the illusion slipped from his body. His skin turned grey and cracked. His hands lost their perfect shape and texture, becoming rough and distorted, nails lengthening into filth-blackened talons. His shining eyes caved inwards, and his perfect nose became a protruding mass of twisting, trunklike flesh, straining outwards from the void in his face. Beneath it, his mouth was small, lipless, and filled with rows of sharp, red-stained teeth. The only thing about Gares that persisted throughout the transformation was his smile.  
  
“It is an honour,” he wheezed, “to greet you in my Lord’s flesh-image, and to die, re-enacting the scene of his greatest sorrow.” His words were failing with his lungs, but he gasped for one final breath. “And now, even as my Master wills, you too shall come to him, in his flesh and of his flesh.”  
  
He smiled as he said it, and he continued to smile as his claws wrapped around Iriel’s head with terrible strength, and, in his dying moments, pulled him into a kiss.  
  



	151. grow

A day passed.  
  
_Like a plant, my cells are multiplying. Soundlessly, mindlessly, growing into the empty spaces, regardless of sense or meaning or goal. Like lichen, softly creeping into every gap, I am spreading._

Iriel’s body was resistant to disease, but corprus wasn’t a disease. It was an awakening. It was an explosion of awareness, a new sensory organ developing, hearingtastingseeingsmellingfeeling… not a drum, but a heartbeat. Not a vision, but a dream. Not a song, but a sequence of chords, echoing across the miles and the millennia into his blood. Adjusting his formula. Editing his blueprint. Teaching his flesh new patterns, new ways to survive, and to grow.  
  
Another day passed.  
  
There was an ecstasy to it, not unlike skooma. His moments of clarity began to melt and blend with the music. Sometimes he was himself, after a fashion; lucid, if rhapsodic. Sometimes, certain things would fade, while others came into needle-sharp focus. Sometimes, he was utterly lost. The Sharmat’s Dream was wilful: teasing, flashing him visions, then swirling away, leaving only hints and promises. And music, always the music, chiming and clashing through his veins.  
  
Music was almost the wrong word. Not inaccurate but insufficient. A euphemism, like using “dispute” to describe a nuclear war. This was music, but also manifesto and constitution, liturgy and dogma, philosophy and love poem. A language his flesh was learning, syllable by mangled, mangling syllable, as he lay on the floor of the shrine, blank as a baby.  
  
Not always. There were moments when he would slip from the Dream and feel the cold stone beneath him, when his own voice would hiss through his mind again, fast and breathless: _you have corprus and you’re going die._ It never lasted long enough to process, before, in terrified desperation, he let himself fall - back into numbness, or into the Dream.  
  
A week passed.  
  
The funny thing was (many things were so _funny_ , honestly, he couldn’t help laughing) he had always fantasised about achieving independence, complete self-sufficiency. Now he had it. His body constantly replenished itself, providing its own sources of nutrition. He needed nothing and nobody, indeed, all his agonies on that front were put to rest. He’d always known the arc of his life was bending inexorably towards total isolation, but it was a relief how obvious the break was, how unambiguous, how angst-free. It was even better than vampirism! There was no alternative! Really, you had to laugh. You had to look on the bright side.  
  
After all, he was finally changing his skin. There was something gloriously iconoclastic about it.  
  
Every Altmer is born a scion of the Aedra, they’d told him, each generation closer to divine perfection. Your blood contains everything our society has worked towards for millennia. You are a static vessel, waiting only to be filled with the necessary knowledge to activate your potential. Your path is determined by your bloodline, itself a map of everything that was, is and might be.  
  
As a child, it had made Ire feel like a walking contradiction. Constant, duelling messages of “you are faultless” and “you are behaving badly”, as if some intervening part was corrupting the expression of his alleged perfection. Early on, he identified this part as “himself”. Later, he developed an ingrained stubbornness against people trying to change him, associating it with his mother, and her insistence that core aspects of his being were voluntary acts of rebellion. This stubbornness persisted, even when the person trying to change him was himself. In defining his own identity as resistance, any alteration, even self-willed, became compromise and capitulation.  
  
It didn’t help that Altmeri thought implicitly encouraged complacency rather than disciplined effort. Your nature arises from your ancestry, which is fixed and immutable. Why struggle against it? Thus Cinteril’s slide from hypervigilant tyrant into apathetic pessimist, marking her shift from a belief that her son was inherently good, albeit wayward, to one that he was foulblood, and therefore unsalvageable.  
  
Iriel eventually came to share his mother’s bleak passivity on the subject. He was stuck with himself, a heap of flaws, mistakes and neuroses, but at least it hurt her almost as much as it did him.  
  
Now, Ire finally had indisputable proof that he was capable of change.  
  
It was a dream come true.  
  
But not his Dream.  
  
  
Another week passed.  
  
There was something growing, in the gap where his canine used to be. Now, when he poked it with his tongue, something poked back.  
  
There were other changes, too, but he didn’t have time. Other voices in his head, clamouring for attention, but he didn’t have time. Didn’t have time for guilt, shame, self-pity, regret, or hope. The Dream had turned skittish and elusive, but that didn’t matter any more. He was eerily calm, driven by a faint but insistent rhythm. He had a purpose. He could push down his despair and revulsion, could observe it dispassionately, before tucking it away. He would deal with it later, or, if there was to be no later, he wouldn’t deal with it at all. It was useless to him. His body and mind were failing, and he had made a decision.  
  
He subsumed himself in a new numbness, one that silenced and stilled everything in his head, except the task he had chosen. This one, small thing he had pared his life’s ambitions down to, the only one he might still fulfil. That would, like it or not, be his epitaph. His Dwemer report.  
  
He had no idea how much time he had left. His mind clouded further with each passing hour, words constantly deserting him, but his will was ironclad. He shut down yet more non-essential functions. In dispensing with certain physical awarenesses, he found he regained access to the Dream. To glimpses of the past, filtered through the warped prism of Dagoth Ur’s perspective. A thief still, he slipped in and out, snatching up valuables. Once he had what he needed, he stopped returning. When the Dream came to him, wheedling and inviting, he shut it out. It had been an amusing diversion, but it could offer him nothing significant, and he had better things to do. One thing. Just barely better. Perhaps it was pointless, but it was his.  
  
He had no more distractions, no competing needs, no excuses. He had the ultimate deadline, and the flickering ghost of his pride.  
  
Deep beneath the swamp, suffused and surrounded by horrors he no longer allowed himself to recognise, Iriel spread out his books and papers across the stone altar-table. He lit every candle, he fanned the last embers of his intelligence into the hottest flame possible, and he burned himself out onto the page.


	152. light

He was dead. He was dead, and a necromancer was raising him, forcing his soul back into a rotting corpse. No, he was sleeping, and his mother was shouting at him to get up, yanking the blankets from over his head. No, he was a tuber, swelling peacefully in the earth, and someone was digging him up, exposing his sallow flesh to the light.  
  
Light?  
  
He was dreaming, and–  
  
No. Not dreaming.  
  
Light. A hint of changes beyond his eyelids. Faint sounds, vibration.  
  
He was–

Scraping, splashing, voices.  
  
“Oh cocksticks, there’s another one. I think it’s still breathing. Shor’s balls, just do it, if you’re gonna, I can’t watch.”  
  
“It’s OK. Stay back, I’ll handle th…”  
  
He was hallucinating, his mind stitching random combinations together, half-remembered things from another life.  
  
“What? What’s wrong, why’d you stop?”  
  
“It’s wearing his scarf.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Bring the torch!”  
  
Fire, close, spitting and crackling. He whimpered, a distant, alien sound.  
  
“So… d'ya think… he’s dead, then? What have they done with him? Do these bilge worms eat other people, or just themselves? Kyne, how’d I get myself into this? I’m a goddamn barmaid, I wasn’t made for this shit.”  
  
“Sheogorath, can you just be quiet, while I finish this one off–fffuck. Oh gods.”  
  
“What? …oh.”  
  
Breath, heavy and quickening.  
  
“No. No. No, please, no…”  
  
“I think I’m gonna be sick again.”  
  
He was uprooted, overturned. Waterlogged sounds bubbled from his throat.  
  
“Iya…? Is it… Are you still… in there?”  
  
The words meant little, but the breaking voice touched something in him, and he opened his crusted eyelids.  
  
Two glowing red eyes swam slowly into focus, soon joined by a pair of brownish-green ones in a pale face. Their noses and mouths were covered by cloth wraps, but he recognised them, even if he couldn’t remember why. Joy seeped into him, and he smiled. They didn’t smile back. Quite the reverse, in fact. Perhaps he was doing it wrong. The pale one pressed a hand over her mouth, through the wrap.  
  
Watching the eyes above him brighten and spill, a tune drifted to the surface of his mind. He hummed it for a while, till the words came. “…give me a tear from out thine eye…” His voice sounded odd, but he couldn’t recall a basis for comparison. “…no more shalt thou need sorrow…” One splashed onto his face, and he laughed. “…thank you…”  
  
  
They were flapping around the cave, fretting and bickering in hushed tones. He really couldn’t understand what they were getting so agitated about. He was trying to be co-operative, but the melodrama of it all kept making him giggle.  
  
“…what you doing?…” he asked the pale woman with the chestnut hair, as she tried to pull a wadded noose of rough greyness over his head.  
  
“It’s one o’ their robes. Found it behind that nasty red fella over there.”  
  
He pouted. “Don’t like robes. Too magey.”  
  
“I know, babe, but you need something. Your old things don’t fit you any more, and besides, they’re all torn and horrible now.”  
  
“Can I keep my scarf?”  
  
“‘Course you can.” She secured it around his neck with a tone of such forced cheer, it set him off laughing again.  
  
“We need to leave.” The Dunmer man returned from the tunnel. “We made it in here without much resistance, but I think they’re gathering, now. The more we hang around, the more trouble we’ll get.”  
  
The woman nodded grim-eyed, and got to her feet. “We’re as ready as we’re gonna be.”  
  
He smiled up at them from where they’d propped him against a rock. “Yes, is been lovely to see you. Please have a good… a safe travels.” He waved a limb in farewell.  
  
They stared at him. “We’re taking you with us,” the woman stated slowly.  
  
He flapped and grimaced, as if refusing the last piece of cake. When he realised she was serious, he became confused. “Why?”  
  
“Because we came to get you out of here!”  
  
“But I’m fine.” He squinted at them in earnest concern. “Really, no need to, to… it’s fine.”  
  
The Dunmer came and crouched next to him with a clink of metal greaves. His hand moved forwards, then stopped, fingers clenching back into his palm. After another moment’s hesitation, he yanked down his face mask instead. “Iya,” he said hoarsely, “you followed me up Red Mountain in a blight storm once, to stop me getting myself killed. So if you think I’m leaving you in a hole to die…”  
  
He swallowed the urge to laugh, this time. He didn’t understand, but he saw pain and felt pity, he wanted to help. “Why are you crying?” he soothed. “Everything’s fine, it’s all easy. Nothing to be sad for. Over soon. Simple. Know the ending. Known quantity. Yes?”  
  
“No!” The Dunmer sprang upright, eyes flaring. “That is NOT how this ends. TILDE!” He looked around wildly. “We’re getting him out! Now!”  
  
She emerged from the shadows, arms bundled in darkness. “Don’t yell at me, I’m right here. I found something we could use, mebbe. If we need to, y'know, keep him covered up.” She shook out the oilskin cloak. “It’s waterproof, so if he’s wrapped in this, we can touch him, and there’ll be less chance of… passing anything on.” She looked at the Dunmer and sighed. “Put your mask back on, idiot.”  
  
He rolled his eyes at her. “I still don’t think it makes any difference, and I can’t breathe in this blighted thing.”  
  
“Blighted thing’s what you’ll be, if–” Their agonised eyes met. Beside them, on the floor, the object of their guilt began giggling hysterically again.  
  
They hauled him upright, one on each side. Once he got used to the idea, he could support his own weight, and was able to walk, after a shuffling fashion. The problem was keeping him focused and directed, his concentration forever slipping away. He had no self-preservation, no awareness of danger, and would trip over rocks, burn himself on braziers or fall down steps, unless guided.  
  
As they were leaving the shrine, he became agitated. “Wait!”  
  
They waited, until it seemed he had lapsed into a fugue again. “Ire, babe, we gotta move.”  
  
“I… my…” He gestured towards the stone table. “Please.” He didn’t know why it was important, only that it was.  
  
The Dunmer went over, and held a torch above the table. He almost laughed, when he saw the books and papers lying there. He ran his fingers across one or two of the covers, then turned, frowning. “Iya, I’m sorry, but we can’t carry all these. You have to leave them.”  
  
“Not… no. Don’t need books any more, only report. Paper.” He felt himself grin. “It’s finished, I really finished it.”  
  
The Dunmer nodded. “OK. But just the writing paper.” He gathered it, rolled it, and put it in his bag. “It’s in with the scrolls, to keep it dry. Don’t worry.”  
  
  
The journey through the tunnels was nightmarish, in the literal sense. A chaotic, swirling miasma of confusion, staggering endlessly through the darkness, his legs like lead weights. He was slow, so slow, in body and mind, not realising he had fallen until someone was already pulling him back up. Not realising they had been attacked, until it was all over.  
  
Only once did he understand, before the end of the fight. On the narrow stone staircase, in the light of the braziers, he watched the Dunmer man, emerald sword in hand, hacking frantically at a huge mass that blocked their downward path. It was bellowing with tuneless rage, flicking him backwards with tentacles that constantly snaked from its robe, even as the Dunmer sliced them off.  
  
Huddled on the steps, as the battle raged, he felt the Nord woman’s arms around him, her body pressed against his back, shielding him. He snickered into his hood at the irrationality of her behaviour - he was the only one the Ascended Sleeper was unlikely to harm!  
  
The flooded tunnels came next, soaking him through, making everything still heavier and slower. In pitch blackness, he was dragged through the viscous mire, all his senses shutting down, completely dependent on these two peculiar people, and their inexplicable determination to… to… no, he’d lost it again.  
  
In the final, tortuous climb to the surface, a single rope up a sea-drenched pouring cliff, all of them crying, or screaming, or both, he could only cling to one fragment of information: he trusted them. They were his friends.  
  
After such darkness, sunlight was harrowing. The Dunmer was hacking and heaving on all fours, the Nord flat on her back, emitting hollow groans. He himself was forced into a dead-kwama curl in the mud, whining over and over: “why? why? why? why?”  
  
The Nord leaned over him, and he uncoiled slightly, tried to make out her face against the blinding brightness around him. “Why?” she echoed. “Because we  _love_  you, you scuttlehead!”  
  
“Oh,” he said, blinking at the unexpected blueness of the sky. “Oh.”


	153. support

“…ar whiter than my true love’s hair, a-sailing on the sea. But I’d trade every taytree that ever grew so free, if stars would guide the safe return of my sailor to me…”  
  
The singing sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a long-abandoned well, but it was only coming as far as the oilskin that Julan and Sottilde were carrying, slung between the two of them as they staggered through the Bitter Coast. It wasn’t that Iriel couldn’t walk. It was simply too much trouble to let him. Exhausted as they were, this was still easier than the alternative.  
  
“…O silkvine twines around the bower, it tightens as it grows. Far tighter than my true love’s arms, when…”

“Shit!” The oilskin slipped through Sottilde’s hands, and Ire’s legs lurched downwards.  
  
Julan turned. “You OK back there?”  
  
“Am I fuck!” She groaned. “I gotta rest again, sorry. I’m–”  
  
“Not cut out for this. It’s fine.” He lowered the other end of the oilskin onto the moss. “You’re actually doing a lot better than I thought you would.”  
  
She grinned, flexing a bicep at him as she collapsed onto the banks of a marshy pool. “I get these muscles from my active lifestyle!” She made a one-handed jerking motion, then sighed at his blank look. “Kyne’s sake, you’re no fun. You’re s'posed to accuse me of being a filthy harlot, so I can be outraged, and tell you I was miming serving a drink. I miss Iriel, he knows how to set up my jokes for me.”  
  
The oilskin, rolled double, squirmed and flipped open, its occupant screwing his eyes up at the sunlight. “Is it morning?” he croaked.  
  
Sottilde gave him a tight smile. “You missed morning down in that hole, love. It’ll be sunset again, in a couple of hours.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“No worries, you just rest yourself, we’ll take care of everything. I liked that song you were singing, by the way.”  
  
“Who was singing?”  
  
“You were, babe.”  
  
“I was?”  
  
“Yeah. About trees, right? ‘Taytree bears a blossom’, and all that.”  
  
“Oh!” His eyes widened. “I know that one! It’s… it’s about trees.”  
  
The smile again, more genuine this time; she had got it warmed up. “Is it, now?”  
  
“Yes… trees… about all these nice trees, and how… how they’re much better than men.”  
  
“There’s a wood joke here, gimme a minute.”  
  
“Except… for… for reasons… you can’t marry a tree. Only a man. So…” Iriel trailed off, frowning slightly, gaze unfocused.  
  
Abandoning the lost thought, he rolled over, until he found Julan’s mud-caked bonemould boots against his head. He followed them upwards, past Orcish greaves and dreugh cuirass, to squint at his face. Julan was sweaty, dirty and grazed along the nose and temple. He was also knitting his brows sternly, until he saw Ire was looking, at which point he attempted to soften his expression. Ire really didn’t mind, either way. “Hello, beautiful,” he slurred, “are you carrying me to bed?”  
  
“Ire…”  
  
“Aww, not interested?” He was laughing. “I’m a verrrrry sexy monster, you know. And so pathetic! Everyone loves pathetic, weak things. Or is it pity? I can never remember how you tell the difference.”

Julan said nothing, but turned and walked a few paces away, along the bank.   
  
“Sorry!” Iriel began crawling out of the oilskin after him. “Verr’ inappropriate, sorry! Only joking. I flirt when… when I’m a hideous bloated monster.” His hand slipped, and he went sideways into the mud, still giggling helplessly.  
  
“You’re not a monster,” Sottilde told him. Then, perhaps fearing he might ask her to defend her statement, she got to her feet and followed Julan.  
  
While his friends stood apart, Julan shaking his head and making small, erratic hand gestures as Sottilde whispered, her arm around his shoulders, Ire took advantage of their distraction. He’d seen a lovely purple mushroom on the other side of the water. By the time they noticed he’d escaped, he was lying on his back in the pond, a violet coprinus cradled against his chest.  
  
“See? I’m a swamp monster,” he called, basking in their despairing gazes from the bank. “I’ve always secretly been one, you know.”  
  
“You’re not a monster, Iya, you’re ill, that’s all.”  
  
“Whatever you want to call it, it’s nothing new. But now it’s finally visible on the outside, people want to do something with me.” He flapped a slimy hand in their general direction. “What are you going to do then?”  
  
“We’re taking you home.”  
  
“Home?” He cupped a handful of greenish water and flung it upwards. “I am home! I never should have crawled out the swamp to begin with. The swamp takes care of everything, living and dead, all mushed up together until our differences are forgotten. I prefer that to union with the divine. Union with the soil. That’s what I want. Just leave me here, please.”  
  
“Oh.” His face slackened, and his arms, which had been waving dreamily, fell limp in a splash of pondscum. “I forgot. They’ll probably want to burn me, in case the corprus spreads. Oh. I… I don’t want to be burned.” Panic shook his voice. “I don’t want any more fire. But perhaps I’m too poisonous for any soil now. Perhaps I can’t even be toxic Imperial garbage dumped in a swamp any more.”  
  
His friends were trying to argue, to say comforting things, but although he appreciated the effort, it was all meaningless noise to him. He lay back in the water, ears submerged, and listened to the swamp, instead.  
  
Dragonflies zig-zagged above him, flashing emerald against the tree canopy. Voices gently percolated his subaqueous idyll. “…got him out last time! My boots are ruined!” “Right, exactly, yours are  _already_  ruined, so…”  
  
“I learned to swim in the sea, you know,” Iriel told the dragonflies. “My pa taught me. He really should’ve used, y'know… thing. Buoyancy. Actual… rules of physical… stuff… to convince me I could do it. Instead, he made it all… faith-based, all… 'trust the sea, Iriel. Let it hold you. It can support you, if you stop struggling, and let it.’”  
  
He closed his eyes, sank his fingers deep into the yielding ecosystem beneath him. “I understand why my pa loved the sea,” he said, “but trust is harder than love. The sea was too unpredictable for me, too rough. The swamp is different. I trust the swamp. I trust it to let it fill me, dissolve me, take and remake me. No longer this rotting body and rotting mind. Seeds for something new.”  
  
Abruptly, he laughed. “Perhaps I could be a tree, after all!” Then twisted his mouth, dissatisfied. “No, not a tree. Too big, too tall, too solid and permanent. Much better to be something soft. Like a mushroom. I wish I were a mushroom. I could be small and quiet and sit in the swamp all toxic and nobody would mind. Soft things, harmless things… A little poisonous, perhaps, but they can’t help it. The swamp has a place for them. I could be welcome here, among the mushrooms.”  
  
He slid lower, only his face visible, voice dreamily mingling with the gaseous murmur of the swamp. “Let me lie here, let me be useful for something, finally. Violet coprinus softly sprouting from my mouth, luminous russula nestling in the sockets of my eyes. Hypha facia frilling my ribs like the richest imperial finery. And at last, my skin will split open, and there’ll be flowers… nothing but flowers… Oh, they’ll say, we thought he was a man, but… he was flowers all along… just flowers and mushrooms…”  
  
He slipped completely under the surface of the water, then, and in perfect unison, Julan and Sottilde lunged forwards into the pool.


	154. blade

Snug in his oilskin hammock, Iriel slept his way out of the Bitter Coast and into the hilly scrublands of West Gash. The Dream had given up on him, but corprus still ran rampant through his being, distorting and disturbing. Movement was difficult, now. Memory and clarity waxed and waned like the moons.  
  
When next he opened his eyes, he was lying in long grass. Above, the sky shaded a sweeping gradient of slate blue to coppery peach, the sun just barely set. A campfire burned to his left, shirts and pants spread to dry on the nearby bushes.

The firelight shone on a figure in guarskin pants, damp hair loose on bare shoulders. Knife in hand, he knelt by a nix-hound corpse, carving out pieces of meat.  
  
With only a trace of uncertainty, Ire applied a label. “Julan.”  
  
He got raised eyebrows, and a beaming smile in response. “Yes! See, you  _can_ remember!” He called out to someone beyond Iriel’s field of vision: “I told you, he gets better sometimes, as well as worse. We can’t be sure it’s hopeless.”  
  
Iriel stared at the dead nix-hound for a while, then returned his gaze to Julan. “You have to get the thing,” he said solemnly, “ _under_  the thing. Or you’ll blunt it.”  
  
Julan’s smile faltered slightly, but he nodded. “Thanks, I’ll try. How… how are you feeling?”  
  
Ire’s face traversed a number of stages of deliberation, as he shifted position. “Wet,” he said, eventually.  
  
“Yeah. Sorry. There was no sense trying to get dry until we were out of the swamp, and after that, we didn’t want to wake you. We can get your robe dry now, if you want to take it off, and–”  
  
“No.” Ire’s fingers clenched into the damp, grey hessian sleeves, and wrapped them around his torso.  
  
Julan nodded slowly, jaw tense. “I guess… I can understand that. Uh… but if you at least move closer to the fire, you might–”  
  
“No.”  
  
“…OK.”  
  
“Whrooooooooooo…” The sound floated through the gathering dusk. A low crooning moan, soon echoed by others, with minor variations in volume and pitch.  
  
“We’re near a guar ranch,” Sottilde told him, entering the firelight. She was wearing a long, gathered skirt, hitched up over her breasts like a strapless dress. “We thought about asking the owner to let us stay in a barn or something, but we figured she’d freak out over the corprus. I mean, guar prob'ly can’t even catch corprus, but y'know how people get.”  
  
Julan shrugged. “Guar can catch blight, so… who knows?”  
  
Iriel sat up. He’d rolled out of the oilskin in his sleep, but he found it nearby, and began tugging it towards him. Attempted, clumsily, to roll himself up in it again.  
  
“Hey,” Sottilde enquired gently. “Sleepy again, already?”  
  
“No, I… I don’t… I…” His lip trembled, as the oilskin tangled around his legs, and he tried to pull it free. “I don’t want to hurt the guar.”  
  
“Shhh, love, it’s fine.”  
  
“I… I don’t want to stay here, if… I don’t want to hurt the guar!”  
  
“You won’t, promise.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Sure, I’m sure. Trust your wise auntie Tilde, yeah?”   
  
Mollified, he nodded, but swaddled himself in the oilskin anyway.  
  
They didn’t push him, when he refused a share of the meal, claiming he didn’t need it. They asked no questions. Still, it wasn’t long before Sottilde shoved the rest of her nix-steak towards Julan, and veered queasily into the bushes.  
  
  
His friends were poring over the map in the firelight, tracing possible routes. “Yeah, I can see it’s shorter that way, I’m not blind,” Sottilde said, “but if you think it’s bad carrying him now, you try doing it over a fucking hill of rocks.  _This_  way, we stay on good, flat roads.”  
  
“OK, but there’s nothing in Caldera except Imperial ebony thieves, we’d end up walking all the way to Balmora. Gah, I would’ve brought intervention scrolls, if I’d known he couldn’t cast. Look, my amulet can teleport two, you should take him, and–”  
  
“No! We stick together. And there’s a Mages’ Guild in Caldera, we can get transport.”  
  
“Ire’s expelled.”  
  
“You leave it to me. I can talk round guild guides, no sweat.”  
  
Julan looked sceptical. “It’s too public. I still think we should’ve got a boat.”  
  
“Fuck boats,” she said, with economy and emphasis. “I’m not pissing about along the western coast, we need to get him to Sadrith Mora, get Helende on this.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess.” Julan leaned back into the grass with a sigh. “If she doesn’t stab me on sight.”  
  
“She’ll come round. I did, didn’t I?” She smirked, as Julan began making choked noises of incredulous laughter.  
  
Iriel said nothing, acclimatised to a state of passive incomprehension. The others, though, exchanging conspiratorial grins, seemed to think his ignorance could be remedied.  
  
“Don’t you wanna know how we found you?” Sottilde demanded.  
  
He nodded and smiled, content just to listen to them talk.  
  
“She hit me!” Julan looked entirely too happy about this. “I had no idea you were missing until she marched into the Madach Tradehouse and smacked me right in the head!”  
  
“I did not hit you straight away, you kwama-grub. I asked you first! I said, ‘what have you done with Iriel?’”  
  
“Yeah, and when I said 'what?’, that was when she hit me.”  
  
“I wanted to show you I meant business! Anyway, you were drunk, and I had to get your attention.”  
  
“You blighted fucking liar! I wasn’t drunk until AFTER you got there and started buying entire bottles of greef!”  
  
“I was loosening your tongue! Seeing as hitting you in your big numbskull head didn’t work!” She cast a guilty look at Iriel, and moderated her glee. “I gotta admit we ended up a teeeensy wee bit shalkfaced that night, but we didn’t know how bad it was, then, did we?”  
  
Iriel frowned, puzzled. “Was what how bad?”  
  
“Uh…” She sought Julan’s eye in desperation, and he obediently caught up her dropped narrative before it smashed. “We didn’t know you were down there,” he said. “We still thought you might be off hunting mushrooms or something.”  
  
Ire nodded happily. “I do like mushrooms.”  
  
Julan was harvesting dried garments from the bushes. “This whole thing was her idea. I mean… I was only still in Gnisis to train, by then. I figured you’d gone, made up your mind not to see me, so…” He shrugged, pulling his tunic over his head. “I was trying to make a new plan. Maybe find those other prophecies you talked about, or… I dunno. I’m no good at plans, but that’s why I was trying. I wanted to do it properly, this time. Think of something you wouldn’t say was stupid and reckless.”  
  
“Gettin’ drunk with Orcs,” interjected Sottilde.  
  
“I wasn’t drunk!” He threw her blouse at her smug grin. “And for the record, I’d been training all day! I didn’t have a plan yet, but at least I could get stronger, and Orcs know about  _that_. And… I guess I was putting off leaving. Even if I didn’t seriously expect you to turn up, by that point.”  
  
“He didn’t expect me, either, but life’s full o’ surprises, innit?” Sottilde rearranged her clothing and sat down next to Ire. “He was hardly my first choice, but I was out of leads. I knew something wasn’t right, y'know? I had a bad feeling, and not just 'cause I felt shit about losing my rag with you. But Helende said she hadn’t seen you in a month, and I couldn’t get anything useful outta that Cosades guy. Had me fooled into thinking he was off his face on skooma, every time I went knocking. So I figured, mebbe you did go to Gnisis after all.”  
  
“So she came and beat me up, and called me names, until she finally believed me when I said I didn’t know anything!”  
  
“It was the way you fell on my shoulder and started wailing about how much you missed him, after we finished the second bottle of greef.”  
  
“You liar, I did not!! I only– all I–”  
  
“So yeah, we were both drunk enough by then to think asking that scary Damn-vanni about you was a good plan. Didn’t end well.”  
  
“Yes it did,” corrected Julan. “We banged on a Telvanni wizard’s door in the middle of the night, yelled drunken threats at him, and survived.” He smirked. “It was worth it for the look on your face when he sent out the Daedroth.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, don’t try an’ pretend you ran any slower than me.”  
  
“Anyway,” Julan continued briskly, leaning forwards to pile more wood on the fire, “the next day, we put together all the information we had. I told her about Cosades being a spy, what kind of work you’d been doing for him.”  
  
“So I twigged that he’d been blowing hot air up me before, and he had to know something. We got a strider back to Balmora, and barged right into his house.”  
  
“For an old sugartooth, that n'wah can move  _really_  fast, when he wants to! I had my sword at his neck, and he did this…  _twisting_ thing, and then I was on the floor, and my blade was stuck three inches into the headboard of the bed!”  
  
“Yeah, he coulda pasted us six ways from Turdas, but when he caught on to what we wanted, he changed his tune. Said he’d rather make use of us than kill us. Gave us a bunch o’ new info he’d received about the mission he’d sent you on. I think he was worried too, tell the truth.”  
  
Julan jabbed a finger at her. “I think he liked you! All those questions about what you’d done, and your skills? He was impressed. He’ll try to make you a Blade next.”  
  
“Me?! A goddamn Blade?! Get outta here!”  
  
“Oh! Oh!” Iriel was sleepily animated, wriggling a hand from the oilskin to gesture, as he lay on his side. “Blade! I remember now! You… you have to get the  _blade_  under the  _carapace!_  If you’re in exactly the right place, you can slide it right in!”  
  
“Uh… yeah.” Julan scratched his head. “Something like that.”  
  
  
The guar were calling again, one to another. Or perhaps to the half-eaten moons, low and looming over the hills. Iriel twitched out of his doze, and lay still within his cocoon, listening. Below the guar’s shuddering song, there was soft breathing to either side of him. Just to be sure, he elbowed them both, until they grumbled drowsily.  
  
“I did a terrible thing,” he told them, “have you heard?”  
  
“…No.”  
  
“I stole a guar! I was in the Grazelands, and I was talking to Shani, and I accidentally stole her guar!”  
  
Sottilde chuckled, to his left. “I think you were dreaming, love.”  
  
“No, no, I stole it. I really did!”  
  
“Did you? Where is it then?”  
  
“It’s living at Muriel’s, it’s joined the Thieves’ Guild.”  
  
Julan was sniggering now, on his other side. “I see. And has it made Operative yet?”  
  
“Don’t be silly. It can hold a lockpick in its little hands, but it can’t reach the lock without its nose getting in the way.”  
  
“Riiiight, sorry, of course. How stupid of me. Guar only get promoted in the Guild through cake-baking, tax fraud and their finely honed nuzzling skills.”  
  
Sottilde groaned. “Will both o’ you scuttleheads  _please_  lemme sleep?”  
  
Iriel was quiet, until he forgot to be. “I’m glad all the guar are safely far away,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt the guar.” His friends didn’t reply. He elbowed them again, affectionately. “I made Operative, you know.”  
  
“Nggh… Did you really.”  
  
“Yes! Not even with cake! Well, not entirely cake. You don’t believe me, do you?”  
  
“We believe you.”  
  
“Like you believe me about stealing the guar?”  
  
“Right. Now go to  _sleep_.”  
  
He tried, but in the depths of his mind, two ideas combined, producing a reaction. The resulting thought drifted slowly to the surface, like a bubble of marsh gas. When it burst, he sat up, eyes wide in the dark. Looked from one sleeping form to another. “Why… Why aren’t  _you_  safely far away? I could hurt you! That… That would be…  _worse than the guar!_ ” He covered his mouth with his hands.  
  
“Shhhhh. Don’t worry.”  
  
“We’re bein’ careful.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
“Yeah.” Julan rolled over with a muffled grunt, until his hip bumped Ire’s, through the oilskin. “And I’ll sleep better if I know you’re close and safe.”  
  
“With you, closer is safer? Really?”  
  
“Promise.”  
  
He closed his eyes again. He listened to the guar-song. For a moment, he thought a lone, jilted chord of the Dream was mingling through it, but it passed. The fear ebbed out of him, and he slept like a stone for the rest of the night.  
  



	155. price

Slowly, inexorably, Iriel descended the stairs of the Ald'ruhn Mages’ Guild. His foot missed the last step, and he tumbled forwards into a crumpled, oilskin-covered heap, all his reflexes long gone. Piece by piece, he hauled himself up again. Slowly, inexorably, he continued across the main hall.  
  
He had woken to find a thought in his mind. One thought, hanging suspended in a bubble of absolute reality, and he knew he had to act on it before it floated away. He had followed it across the western Ashlands, Julan and Sottilde scurrying alongside, initially remonstrating, eventually resigned. Once he got moving, he was tireless and unstoppable as a Steam Centurion. He couldn’t risk losing sight of the thought by trying to explain it to them. He could only repeat, in a gasping monotone, to the rhythm of his footfalls in the ash: Please. One thing. I have to do this one, last thing, and then I’ll do whatever you want.

Hours later, he was here. The others had remained outside at his request, though if he took too long, they would no doubt come to retrieve him. He hoped that wouldn’t be necessary, but his condition was difficult to predict. Still, he couldn’t let his thoughts go to pieces again, yet. He knew he couldn’t maintain his focus much longer, but he only needed a few minutes more.  
  
He saw no one, but heard footsteps, and several doors slamming shut. When it came to mysterious, slow-shuffling, hooded figures, sensible mages knew that discretion trumped curiosity.  
  
She hadn’t detected his approach, because her door was still unlocked. Behind it, he found her at her desk, idly doodling on what looked like an original Dwemer blueprint. She sprang up at the door’s creak, but once she turned, her face was all composed self-assurance. “Why have you interrupted me?”  
  
He pushed back his hood, and waited to see if that made a difference to her demeanour. It did. “That’s corprus!” she hissed. “Get away from me, before I call the guards!”  
  
He smiled, revelling in her sharp, horrified inhalation. “Don’t worry. This won’t take long.”  
  
“Who are you?!”  
  
“Oh, just a thief.” His voice still had something of the swamp creature to it, but for now he was, at least, coherent. “Don’t you remember? You had me steal things for you. Then you expelled me because you couldn’t condone thievery in your guildhall. Then you hired me back, to steal things for you again.” An amorphous shrug. “It makes sense, if you’re someone who thinks rules are for other people. And really, what mage doesn’t? It’s the essence of magic.”  
  
“Iriel.” She was very still. “You’re here for revenge?” He could see the cogs turning behind her eyes: spells, defences, arguments, escapes.  
  
“No. I’m dying, and I really don’t care that much about you.” He looked her in the face. “I’m here to offer you a deal. Please don’t fireball me until I’ve explained, I think you’ll regret it. I’m going to reach into my pocket now. Stay calm, it’s only paper. Not even enchanted.”  
  
He removed a thick sheaf of writing paper from his robe, and held the top sheet out to her, his hand gloved. She glared at it, suspicion emanating from every pore. Then she read the title. With a snort, she looked up at him. “Impossible.”  
  
“Read the conclusion.” He shuffled the last few pages out, and offered them to her. She hesitated only briefly.  
  
“A minute later, her eyes were boring into him again, all composure abandoned. "You… you have  _evidence_  for this? You can prove  _any_  of this… this… ridiculous…”  
  
“Genius. It’s a work of fucking genius, Edwinna.”  
  
“All mages say that about their work,” she muttered as she began rereading certain paragraphs, lips pressed tightly together.  
  
“This time, it’s true,” he croaked. “Personal pride doesn’t come into it. It can’t. The person who wrote this is dead, lost to my condition. I couldn’t write it, now. I can’t even read it, it’s completely beyond me. I only remember that it’s correct, and that it’s brilliant. It’ll revolutionise the discipline.” He waved the rest of the sheaf at her. “It’s all here: research, methodology, evidence, statistics. It’s the real thing.”  
  
Her lips fluttered emptily for a while, before she finally spoke. “Why are you showing me this? If what you say is true, you could take this straight to Trebonius. You wouldn’t just be reinstated, you could demand any position you wanted. Mine, for example.”  
  
“Or I could take it to the Telvanni. Or both, and start a bidding war. Instead, I’m offering it to you. Erase my name, claim it’s all your own work. If anyone remembers me, say I was merely your research assistant. Make them award you that Chair of Dwemer Studies you’ve always wanted.”  
  
She stared at him. “What’s the price?”  
  
“You give Anarenen’s family sword back.”  
  
“That’s  _all?!_ ” She tossed her head, incredulous. “I wanted to study the enchantment, but he was being so  _awkward_  about letting me borrow it. I finished with it months ago, it’s useless to me.” Her fingers twitched, her eyes narrowed. “Why not simply steal the tanto back yourself, if you want it so badly? As you say, you’ve stolen before.”  
  
“And I’m sick of it. I want to trade fairly with you.”   
  
“No, you don’t. This is a trap. You want to ruin me, to tempt me, and then reveal the truth. You want to destroy my reputation.”  
  
An ugly grin split his face. “Who would they believe? You, or an expelled apprentice with a grudge and a criminal record?” He moved closer to the candelabra, and held a page of his report over the flame. “Choose now: do you want this, or not?”  
  
A sneer. “You wouldn’t.”  
  
He lowered his hand, and she gasped, as the fire consumed the paper. When it reached his fingers, he tossed it to the floor at her feet. She frost-spelled the embers before the rug caught.  
  
“That was a page from the literature review,” he said. “I based that on your notes, so I’m sure you can recreate it. The rest… you couldn’t begin to.” He held another page up. “Give me the sword, Edwinna. I don’t have time to argue.”  
  
“Stop trying to intimidate me with these theatrics. You must have another copy, or you would never–”  
  
He burned another page, the flames reflecting in his steady gaze. “No other copies. You have to understand - I don’t care. I’m no longer a scholar. None of this will bring the Dwemer back. This knowledge has no value to me in itself. It’s only worth what I can get for it. And I told you my price.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I’m dying. You’ll never have to see me again.”  
  
“But…”  
  
He felt his mental hold wavering, his focus slipping. All or nothing, then.  
  
When he began moving the entire wad of paper towards the candle, she dived across the room towards it.  
  
  
In the months and years that followed, Edwinna Elbert rose to considerable prominence in the field of Dwemer Studies. The publication of her book,  _Tonal Intellects: A Comprehensive Elucidation of the Dwemer Question_ , brought her financial security, academic distinction, and a permanent place among the guests of honour at any respectable scholarly gathering.  
  
True to his word, she never saw Iriel again. When the expected betrayal failed to materialise, she came to suppose that he genuinely had no desire to revenge himself upon her. Really, she told herself, why would he? She had acted entirely reasonably. He had, naturally, respected her abilities, and recognised that only through her, could his theories find their audience. Of course, they were her theories, now, and it wasn’t long before she thought of them as such. Iriel barely registered in her mind. He’d been a frail, mouse-like person, hardly capable of harbouring any great vengeance.  
  
She was wrong. Iriel’s revenge was well-planned, and ever-present. It was its own Anticipation, existing in the fear of a revenge that never came. In the creeping paranoia, that kept her awake at night, that made her eye every official-looking letter with dread. And even once that faded, his revenge lived on. In her brittle, glassy smile at the seminars and parties she began making excuses not to attend. In her panicked glances down hallways, as she avoided encounters with colleagues and students alike. In the reputation she gained for humility and modest deflection, whenever anyone mentioned her famous book, her famous theories (and it really  _was_  her book! they really  _were_  her theories!). In her constant, gnawing anxiety, that gradually came to dominate every aspect of her life, that someone would ask her to explain them.  
  
  



	156. care

Iriel was tired. The kind of tired where gravity was no longer a background physical footnote, but an all-pervading drag on body and mind. Where his blood felt dense as lead, and he could almost hear the grating effort in every rusted heartbeat. He would go for long moments without breathing, then haul in a racking, pain-filled breath that forced him onward through time, laboured oar-strokes through the treacle of chronology.  
  
Every time he began to slip back, Helende’s voice would pin him to reality again, though she was rarely talking to him. Right now, her target was the Imperial Cult healer in Wolverine Hall, Sadrith Mora’s Imperial outpost.  
  
“…ridiculous. Don’t you people swear oaths? You can’t simply write him off, you have to at least  _try_ something.”  
  
“With respect–”  
  
“I don’t want your respect, I want you to do your job.”  
  
“–there is nothing to be done! This condition… it does not behave like a normal disease, it is more akin, in fact, to a magical curse. Perhaps you could try the Mages Guild?”  
  
“We just came from the Mages’ Guild, as you know perfectly well!”

Indeed they had, via the guild guide from Ald'ruhn. Ire would have preferred to remain expelled, but Edwinna had insisted on his reinstatement. Her reasons were entirely self-serving, but he couldn’t face arguing, and it let him guild-travel. Even if Erranil had winced and shuddered, as if she might contract something from even her spell touching his body.  
  
He’d left the tanto in Anarenen’s room, slipped beneath the pillow with a note from the Bal Molagmer. Julan had lent him his gloves for the occasion, though they barely fitted over his swollen fingers.  
  
Word travels fast through the Altmeri guild-guide grapevine. When they’d arrived in the Sadrith Mora teleportation chamber, Helende had been waiting for them. She’d seized control of the situation, dragging everyone else along with the force of a hurricane, though she was currently blowing up against a brick wall.  
  
“…on’t give me that. I’m not letting the Telvanni anywhere near him. You have a sworn duty of care to treat him!”  
  
“I have a duty of care to the rest of my patients and my staff, any of whom he might infect! Must I summon the guards? By law, all corprus victims must be sent to Divayth Fyr at the–”  
  
“Daedra take the law, and you!”  
  
Defeated, she motioned towards the door. “Come on. I knew expecting anything from this lot was a waste of time. Let’s get him home. Tomorrow, we’ll try a different approach. Erer has contacts, we might…”  
  
Looking around, Iriel met the eye of the Dunmer woman perched next to him on the bench. She had been waiting with Helende, though Ire hadn’t yet heard her speak. She smiled brightly at him, small, round eyes glinting. Her deep brown hair was coiled neatly behind her head, and there was a smoky blue tint to her grey skin. She was short and plumply curvy for an elf, but her turquoise robe was perfectly tailored and encrusted with spiralling gold embroidery. She had the quiet serenity of an ex-nun, disgraced but unrepentant.  
  
Despite his exhaustion, Ire was reasonably lucid. Even so, he couldn’t be sure if he had genuinely never seen her before, or if his memory was still collapsing between his ears. It was reassuring when she said, in a low, Dunmeri-accented purr: “Hello, Iriel. My name is Tinaso. We are not introduced, but Helende has told me many charming things about you. I’m very sorry that you are unwell, and I hope that I can help.”  
  
Iriel coughed damply, and pushed himself up off the bench. “Thank you,” he said, “but… really… no way to help.”  
  
Helende’s voice sounded across the room, warm, but firm: “There are always ways to help.”  
  
Ire was sleepily composed. “Healer’s right. No cure.”  
  
“We can still take care of you!”  
  
Iriel frowned, but couldn’t form the grey sludge of his discomfort into words. He shuffled past her into the stairwell, pulling his hood over his head.  
  
“Ohhh no you don’t.” As soon as Iriel passed through, Helende moved into the doorway behind him. “You brought him home, but that’s quite enough. I will not let you use this as an excuse to crowbar yourself back into his life. We can take it from here. Leave.”  
  
Julan glared up at her, his stance carefully non-hostile, but implacable. “No.”  
  
“He doesn’t need you.”  
  
Julan didn’t reply.  
  
“So it’s going to be like before, is it?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Really? So if he tells you to go away now, you will?” Julan visibly wavered, ground his jaw in silence. Helende raised an eyebrow. “Iriel, wh–”  
  
Julan didn’t let her finish the question. “No!”  
  
“Then it  _is_  like before, then, isn’t it?”  
  
“…No.”  
  
“Julan, I told Cel to be gentle with you, last time, but I won’t make that mistake again. You should learn from the past, too. Walk away.”  
  
“ _No._ ”  
  
Iriel stood in the spiral stairwell, watching the lines of the stonework blur around him.  
  
_How can she ask me if I want him to stay? To give me responsibility for him, when I don’t have that strength or judgement? Stendarr bless him for sparing me that._  
  
Ire hadn’t resisted when Helende told Sottilde to mage-travel back to Balmora, but then, Sottilde hadn’t argued, either. She’d been quiet and grey-pale, almost as exhausted as Iriel. “I’ll come back over and see you real soon,” she’d said, “but I gotta sleep, and I’ve missed weeks of work already. No dying, yeah? I love you, and you haven’t read my new story yet. I put Dumac in it for you!”  
  
Helende and Julan were still standing off at the chapel entrance. Iriel, already swaying, considered breaking the deadlock by falling down the stairs. The way he was feeling, it would barely be accidental. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.  
  
“My dear,” Tinaso murmured, resting a hand on Helende’s waist, “perhaps it would be more comfortable for everyone to discuss this question later, when Iriel is properly rested?”  
  
Helende looked down at her, weary exasperation tugging at the corners of her eyes. “Don’t roll out that Telvanni sycophant voice for me, Tin. I know what you really mean.” She sighed. “And you’re right. I’m sorry, Iriel. Let’s go home.”  
  
She threw an occasional glare at Julan over her shoulder, as he followed a short distance behind them, but left it, for now, at that.  
  
  
It was late. The journey from Wolverine Hall was a dizzy sleepwalk of stone steps and bridges, the shadows heavy and submarine. Iriel heard only his footfalls sounding dully through the night air as he lumbered from darkness to torchlight and back again. As they entered the Telvanni city itself, the ground softened. Sadrith Mora: the mushroom forest.  
  
“Halt. What business do you have at this hour?” The guard’s voice echoed strangely from inside her cephalopod helm. The rest of her wore bonemould, sculpted with the insignia of Master Neloth, the local mage lord.  
  
“No business,” he heard Helende say, all casual breeziness. “Just meeting friends off the guild transport, and now we’re off to bed.”  
  
“Oh, it’s you.” The guard’s voice was closer now, the tension draining from it, replaced by disdain. “You had better be right about this lack of  _business_ , Altmer. I know what they say about yours.”  
  
“It’s a very quiet night, as far as I’m aware. There’s been no trouble, has there?”  
  
“You tell me, f'lah.” The guard paused, on the point of waving them on. “It’s too dry for a cloak like that, though. You there, show your face.”  
  
Yet again, the glare of torchlight, the sting of scrutiny. Again, the explosion of horrified outrage and dismayed repulsion. Ire endured it for what felt like the hundredth time, as the inevitable arguments began again.  
  
“…eloth will not suffer a corprus victim in Sadrith Mora! He may be docile now, but they turn into violent monsters without warning! You wait, n'wah, we’ll close down that filthy nest of rats you call a cornerclub on the grounds of public health! Burn it down, we should!”  
  
“Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? You’ve been waiting for an excuse, looking for something you can pin on us. And I know who’s pulling your strings, too, and it’s not Neloth, though I’m sure he likes their blood-stained money well enough…”  
  
“Please excuse me.” Tinaso’s mild voice, skilfully sliding into a gap in the altercation. “I believe there has been a misunderstanding. This unfortunate young man is not going to the cornerclub. He is with me, and we are leaving for Tel Fyr directly. It was mere chance that we met my friend Helende on our way.”  
  
The guard squinted at her. “Who are you?”  
  
“Tinaso Alan, retainer to Mistress Dratha of Tel Mora, and spellwright of House Telvanni.” She flashed an amulet into the torchlight, and the guard nodded slowly.  
  
“Apologies, muthsera. I’m sure you understand my concerns.”  
  
Tinaso smiled. “Completely. Have no fears, we shall be on our way to the Corprusarium before the dawn arrives.”  
  
When the guard had gone, Helende grinned, and planted a kiss on Tinaso’s forehead. “Excellent rank-pull, my dear. Now, all we have to do is get him home without further interference. After that, Erer can hide him, should they send any more of their minions to check.”  
  
She set off again, Tinaso at her side. When Iriel didn’t move, Julan appeared at his elbow. “You OK?” He shook his head, chest heaving.  
  
Helende trotted back, a faint crease in her brow. “Come on, starshine, we’re nearly home.”  
  
Ire sucked in air, as if preparing for an underwater marathon. “No,” he said. “I… it’s not… I won’t.”  
  
“Don’t be silly, we don’t have time.”  
  
He shook his head again, harder. “Not me. You. Silly… to risk this.”  
  
“My life is all about the calculated risks. It’s what I do. I’m good at it.”  
  
His eyes found hers. “Not  _that_  good.”  
  
Her jaw tightened, but she only said, “Iriel, you’re my family.”  
  
“And you’re mine!” The effort of raising his voice made him sway, and he felt Julan steady him. “All of you, even… even fucking  _Celegorn_ , and… and I would let you take care of me, I really would, but… you have to let me take care of you as well. You think… you can manage the risk, but… if I infected somebody, hurt somebody, if they found me and the Guild was punished… you’d never forgive yourself. It’s silliness… you can’t… make everything about me.” He coughed. “Remember?”   
  
A long silence. She brushed at her eyes, outmanoeuvred. “Then where?”  
  
“You know where. They keeps saying it, and they’re right.”  
  
“You have no idea how much I hate it when  _they_  are right.”  
  
He fumbled for a smile. “Of course I do.”  
  
“All right.” She expelled a sharp breath and straightened her shoulders. “All right. Just give me a moment to think of a plan to–”  
  
“Get him there?” Tinaso was pressing the tips of her fingers together, eyes shining with the intensity of her thoughts. “My dear… do you remember that night at my Tower, when I said your reckless curiosity was not sufficient reason to risk angering Mistress Dratha by borrowing things without permission?”  
  
Helende’s eyes grew as bright as Tinaso’s, and despite her troubles, a grin crept over her face. “Stars, you mean I’m getting my midnight joyride after all?”  
  



	157. people

The sand was cool beneath Iriel’s cheek, and the waves’ rough music helped regulate his breathing. Tinaso had suggested they await her here, on this secluded beach away from the towers.  
  
“Even if I use Recall,” she’d said, gripping her amulet, “it will take two hours for me to return. It is fast, but not lightning. Rest yourselves, I will come as soon as possible.”  
  
Helende sat beside him, spinning a slender, steel probe in her fingers. Pointedly ignoring Julan, who was somewhere over by the rocks, doing his best to be ignorable.  
  
“Do you need anything from your room?” she asked, after a while. “I could nip over and fetch things.”  
  
He took a long time to answer. His thoughts were reverting to vapour again, words drifting away and sliding between the dark clouds towards the stars. “I can’t think of anything,” he said, with honesty.  
  
“Well, if you want me to get you something, just say the word.”

“Didn’t you once say,” he said, some minutes later, “that you would get me skooma, if I gave you a good enough reason?”  
  
She made a non-committal sound. “I’m almost certain,” she said, “that I specified moon sugar, not skooma.”  
  
“Oh. I’m not sure… that would… be strong enough.”  
“Enough to what?”  
“To kill me, of course.”  
“Iriel, don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“Isn’t it a good enough reason? I can’t think of a better one than… not becoming a violent monster… not harming my friends. I don’t know how much I’d need, though.” He began laughing a damp, hissing laugh. “I should ask Tsiya. She might hate me enough to give me an accurate dosage.”  
  
Helende sighed. “If you’re trying to make me feel better about turning you over to the godforsaken Telvanni, thank you. It’s almost working.”  
  
Buoyed by his success at comforting her, he tried to extend the joke. (In his mind, it was a joke, because he found it funny. Although he wasn’t sure why, since he was only stating facts.) “At least… as a Telvanni experiment, I’ll be making myself useful. Here, I’ll only be a burden to everyone.”  
  
Her tone sharpened. “Iriel, don’t talk like that. People aren’t burdens.” She picked at a hole in the knee of her pants with the probe. “Bodu still can’t walk, you know, and perhaps he never will. Celegorn will always have problems interacting with people who aren’t used to him. But it isn’t limited to them, it’s only that some needs are more visible than others. Everyone needs support of one kind or another. Everyone, always. It’s how we are, it’s how we survive, and it’s how our family works. I wouldn’t be here today, if I hadn’t found people who helped me. If Habasi hadn’t decided to keep me, the night I crashed through her bedroom ceiling, with a sackful of spoiled ash yams, a thousand-drake bounty and a broken collarbone.”  
  
As best he could, Iriel was smiling. “I thought it would be good to die of skooma,” he murmured. “It’s the closest thing I can imagine to dying of an overdose of love. Not very close. Just closest. But you can’t die from too much love. If you could, I would have done it already.”  
  
  
On the other side of the island, dawn was close, the sky behind the hills beginning to pale. On the western shore where they sat, night still dominated. So it was dark, when it came towards them from across the sea. A round, shadowy blob, hurtling out of the grey ocean horizon, increasing in size. Humming.  
  
A sunray lanced over the ridge, catching the craft on its copper-green bugshell dome as it skimmed the surface of the bay, some six inches above the water. When it skidded to a halt on the beach in a spray of sand and surprised crustaceans, Helende gasped with delight.  
  
Julan leapt to his feet, eyes bulging, already launching into a reflexive: “Sheo-fucking-gorath, I am NOT getti…” he caught Helende’s triumphant smirk “…not getting left behind when we ride in the Telvanni deathtrap, oh _gods_ …”  
  
Tinaso’s windblown head emerged from a small, oval aperture, near what was, presumably, the front. “I’m very sorry for the delay. One of the enchantments would not initialise, and I had to find a fresh gem. I used a somewhat inferior soul, but it’s been…” she pursed her lips “… _largely_ stable for _most_ of the last third of the journey. Are you ready to go?”  
  
Julan had closed his eyes. “I’m going to die. I’m going to d–” he opened them and cast Iriel a tortured glance “–definitely not complain about it, oh _fuck_ …”  
  
  
They cruised across the rippling sea, the rising sun behind them.  
  
It was known in some circles as a Telvanni Elytractic Altercraft, but Tinaso called it the bugskimmer. Skimmer, because technically speaking, it did not fly, rather maintained an enchantment-fuelled distance from the waves more akin to water walking. Bug, because several had clearly gone into its construction.  
  
The largest had donated its shell to the main chassis, which was domed, glistening and around ten feet long. Much of the rest was chitin, such as the smooth, shell-like underside, and the delicate network of struts that separated it from the carapace.  
  
The bonemould spikes were probably decorative, though some, twisted into tiny, spiralling cages, did serve to house the many soul gems powering the vessel. Truly, it was a magical marvel. Especially once Tinaso, to make room for passengers, had cleared out the back seat, and extracted all the bits of scrib jerky, soiled handkerchiefs and a grey, wrinkled kwama egg that had evidently been lost behind the cushions for quite some time.  
  
It was understandable that such a thing might happen - there were a lot of cushions. Some very badly embroidered, most sagging and lumpy, and all of them smelling of geriatric nix-hound. There was also a frayed and faded Ashlander rug, beneath which an equally frayed and faded Ashlander was now snoring gently. For all his horror of buoyancy, Julan had been exhausted. The undulating motion and hypnotic hum of the stabilising crystals had done for him.  
  
“Should take the opportunity to shove him overboard,” muttered Helende darkly, but her heart wasn’t in it. It’s hard to stay angry with people when they’re asleep. Especially people like Julan, who look so much younger, once unconsciousness steals the sullen tension from their brow.  
  
Iriel slept too, for much of the journey, curled up in his oilskin on the other side of the bug. Helende and Tinaso were sitting up front on yet more cushions, these apparently with the solidity of an actual bench beneath them. Somewhere.  
  
Once, Ire would have been consumed with curiosity about how Tinaso was controlling the craft, but now he was merely content that she was. Shielded from the morning sun and all its sparkling reflections on the water, he dozed, occasionally picking up snatches of conversation.  
  
“Regarding our discussion of last week… did you decide yet? Should I arrange a meeting? If you need more time, that is quite understandable, I simply–”  
  
“No, no. I’ve decided. There’s nothing to decide, except whether I trust Dratha an inch, and… well. I’ll talk to her. Then we’ll see.”  
  
“You might be surprised. She has always been most keen, in the past.”  
  
A derisive snort. “That’s rather what concerns me. I know how I see things, I’m less sure she sees it the same way.”  
  
“Is it important to you how she thinks of it, if you get what you want?”  
  
“Not remotely, but I’d like to know, if she plans to use it for political point-scoring. Paint herself as the godlike architect of some non-existent _conversion_. She’s not affecting who I _am_ , she’s performing an adjustment.” A short silence. “I do wish she wouldn’t call it _fleshcrafting_. Makes it sound like she’s making me a wicker basket.”  
  
“Perhaps you could ask her to include a nice decorative border.”  
  
“Hah! Not if these cushions are anything to go by!”  
  
“Eeeh! I will crash the skimmer, you–!” The conversation descended into cackling laughter and flying cushions, at least one of which ended up in the clear waters of Zafirbel Bay. By then, though, Iriel had drifted off again.  
  
  
The slick chitin floor shifted under him, crunching onto sand. He was nudged awake. “Iriel?” Round, red eyes blinked at him, from over a pile of cushions.  
  
The threads of his mind had retangled in his sleep, the ends slipped from his grasp. Still, he caught hold of his name, and nodded.  
  
“I have stopped us on the far side of the northern island,” Tinaso said. “If I take the bugskimmer any closer, I am afraid that someone in the Tower may recognise it. I would… prefer to avoid a diplomatic incident. Should Lord Fyr believe my mistress is spying on him, House politics may become… more complex.”  
  
Helende laughed. “You’re just afraid he’ll say something to Dratha, and she’ll find you out!”  
  
Tinaso smoothed an eyebrow, glancing nervously at their surroundings. “I would certainly prefer to return the skimmer before she finds its absence. Tel Fyr is but two miles to the south of here. I am very sorry to rush you, but perhaps we could get started?”  
  
“Wait!” Julan flailed upright, fighting off the rug. He saw Helende’s expression and hurried on before she could speak. “You don’t have to come! Either of you. You can take this thing back right now, I’ll get him there.”  
  
“Julan, I’m still not pleased you’ve come _this_ far, never mind–”  
  
He had the rug in a death-grip. “I know, but… Sheogorath, what d'you think I’m gonna do?! I’ve travelled all over Vvardenfell with him, I can walk him two blighted miles! He doesn’t need you all to come and gawk at him, it’ll be fine. Let me do this.”  
  
Helende opened her mouth to incinerate him, but Ire was nodding. “Please,” he said. “Thank you, sorry, but please…” he flapped a hand at Julan, “…what _he_ said.”  
  
She looked from Iriel to Julan. The latter was examining his nails. After a moment, he glanced up at her. Raised an eyebrow. She sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t leave the Guild unsupervised much longer. I’ve moved the flour three times this month, but Cel will keep finding the sacks. But… that means I have to say goodbye now. And it… just feels so _wrong_. Cel’s back home, you brought Bodu home. The last thing I should be doing is sending one of my people away, to be locked up in… in some…”  
  
Iriel stared at her, clasping his distorted fingers so tightly he couldn’t feel them. He didn’t know what to do with her grief. He didn’t have a place to put all this unfettered emotion that people kept sloshing over him. He could only watch it spill, terrified, knowing it was his fault, helpless to clean it up. “I’m sorry,” he said, again. “Please, I’m sorry, thank you. Thank you.”


	158. ignore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not that anyone is likely to care, but Ire’s tree song is sung to a tune somewhere in the region of [this one](https://play.spotify.com/track/79lXY257UNNiMQwTjRggmO?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open). Sorry, it’s not on YouTube, so I could only get a spotify link.

“O sindil bark is tender, it blushes with the dawn. More tender than my true love’s heart, that left me here to mourn.”  
  
Iriel walked, slow but unaided, across the rocky terrain, sea-breeze in his hair. Everything was simpler, now that his audience was reduced to one person, and a small islands’ worth of flora and fauna. Julan was silent, so Ire’s songs were spilling freely out of his head. His voice wasn’t what it had been, but if the mudcrabs and the mushrooms didn’t care, neither did he.  
  
“But I’d give every sindil grove, from Dusk to Silverlorn, if winds would blow him back to me, before our babe is born.”

He slowed to a halt, and leaned against the mottled stem of an Emperor Parasol. “I just had a horrible thought,” he said, turning worried eyes on Julan. “Do you think they’ll hold a funeral for me?”  
  
Julan blinked at him, yanked unexpectedly from his own thoughts. “What?”  
  
“A funeral! You mustn’t, I can’t bear it.”  
  
“Ire, stop it.”  
  
“No, no, listen. All these goodbyes are bad enough, people making themselves all sad, and… all… all… Please don’t make a whole big…  _event_  of it as well! I can’t bear it. People having to stand around for hours, talking about me, forced to try and think of nice things to say? It makes me feel ill. Nobody has to do that for me! Please, just… get rid of my body however you think best, and–”  
  
“Sheogorath’s teeth, Ire!”  
  
“Even fire, I suppose, would be bearable. I’ll be dead, I won’t feel anything, and ash is very fertile, they say. You can feed me to a mushroom, or even a tree. I’d like that, but no funeral, no gravestone, no speeches, no–”  
  
“You are not going to die! We don’t know that yet, so–”  
  
“Of course I am, now promise me you won’t do the funeral thing.”  
  
“No!”  
  
“I’m dying, and you don’t care about my wishes?”  
  
“Listen, you’re not dying. Tinaso says Divayth Fyr’s working on a cure, so maybe he can help you! You can’t give up hope yet. And if the fear of a big funeral where we all talk about how great you were, and how much we miss you will motivate you to keep living, then–”  
  
Ire shot him a look of betrayal. “You’re horrible.”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
Iriel sulked for a while, until he forgot what he was sulking about and began singing again.  
  
“O trees are tall and trees are strong, and beautiful are they. They’ll stand beside you all your life, until your dying day.  
But if your foolish maiden’s heart your wisdom should betray, seek you a man who’s like a tree, for deep roots never stray.”  
  
He halted again, chewing his lip as sudden doubts tendrilled out of the corners of his mind. He squinted at his companion. “Julan?”  
  
“Mhm?”  
  
“I… I think I might have forgotten something important.”  
  
“It’s OK if you forget things, you’re ill. We get it.”  
  
“Yes, I, I know, but… I just realised something… about something… and now I’m confused, and worried I’ve… I… this is… something I’d like to be clear about.”  
  
“Tell me, and I’ll try to help.”  
  
“When Tilde left, she said something to me.”  
  
“Tilde says a lot of things.”  
  
“She said I shouldn’t worry, because my boyfriend was going to take good care of me.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Did she mean you? I… I think she must have, and I certainly… I have a lot of… memories on the matter, some  _very_  contradictory, but… I can’t… be sure if I…”  
  
“Tilde says a lot of things she shouldn’t.”  
  
“Oh… so she…?”  
  
“She got mixed up. I was only your boyfriend very briefly, and I’m definitely not any more.”  
  
“Ah! Yes, that… that makes sense.”  
  
“But I’m still your friend, and she was right that I’m going to take care of you. Try to, anyway.” A small shalk scuttled into their path. Julan discouraged it with his sword-point until it ran off into the marshmerrow. “See?” He offered an unconvincing grin. “I’m here to protect you.”  
  
  
As they reached the outskirts of Tel Fyr, and began following the walls of the main tower, Ire wagged a finger at Julan. “I knew I was getting things muddled with Tilde! You and she are together, yes?”  
  
“What?!”  
  
“Oh… sorry… for some reason, I… so you  _didn’t_  sleep with her?”  
  
“I… look… OK, yes, but–”  
  
“I thought so! I  _definitely_ remember–”  
  
“But that was a long time ago! And we both agree it was a horrible mistake that we’re never going to repeat!”  
  
“Why ever not? You should! I want… I want you both to be happy!”  
  
“Yeah, us too, that’s why we’re not doing it again.”  
  
“Oh… well, perhaps you should wait. The funeral’s the traditional time for it, you know.” He gave Julan a sage nod. “In novels, anyway. Something about all the looming mortality.”  
  
His friend had the merest edge of a genuine smile. “Like when you’re trapped with someone, and about to die?”  
  
“Exactly, it’s a… thing. Sexy thing. Affidavit? Amnesiac?” After a moment, he shrugged, resigned. “I suppose you can have a funeral for me if you really want. I’d hate to spoil things for you.”  
  
Julan rolled his eyes. “I’m not listening to this guarshit, Ire.”  
  
“Yes, yes, please ignore me.” Iriel paused to stroke a dusky jade-green lichen crested with pale, lace-like grey, spraying across the fungal wall like seafoam. “It’s all I’ve ever really wanted.”  
  
He wasn’t sure if Julan’s barely audible snort indicated disbelief or amusement. “It’s true,” he insisted. “Hiranel wanted to be  _tolerated_ , you know. He said that if your status was absolutely beyond reproach, if you were extremely highblood, and had proved it by having respectable highblood children, or… or by doing something so impressive that nobody could deny you were a genius, or a hero… then if you were quiet about it, people would tolerate you being gay.”  
  
He ran his finger through the lichen’s rippling curls. “‘Nel seemed to think this was very impressive. I thought it was horrible. I didn’t want to be tolerated. The idea that people think you’re loathsome, and… and they hate you, and they want to hurt you, but they’re valiantly restraining themselves. And you’re supposed to be grateful for the favour. However temporary it might turn out to be.” His face contracted in disgust. “I don’t want to be tolerated. Awful.”  
  
Julan watched him, head on one side. “So you want to be ignored? That’s the only other option, that’s all you want to be?”  
  
Ire frowned. “Respected? No… I’m not sure I’d enjoy being respected. It sounds pompous, and involving a lot of expectation. I…” His lips moved soundlessly for a moment. “Can’t I just… want to be…  _liked?_  Is that ridiculous, is that terrible?” He gave a nervous laugh. “It’s all so complicated. That’s why I’d rather be ignored. Much easier.” He suddenly realised he was pulling bits off the lichen, and snatched his hand away, with a gasp and a whispered apology.  
  
  
Here was the main entrance to Tel Fyr, a round golden door in the sprouting tower. Hung with sun-bleached banners and furnished with two large, silver bells that shimmered with enchantment. They were labelled (in Tamrielic, below the Daedric-scripted Dunmeris), “Visitors” and “Victims”.  
  
Iriel looked at the bells for a while. Then he looked at Julan. “I’m so relieved you’re not my boyfriend.” He was laughing again, edgy and breathless. “I was worried the sad goodbyes were about to get even worse. And I can’t… really, I… it makes everything so… difficult for people, and I… I wish… they could just forget about me, without so much trouble.” His gaze crept back to the bells.  
  
“Don’t worry.” Julan’s voice was forcibly upbeat. “That won’t be a problem. I won’t… I mean… I was going to stick around a bit longer anyway.” He glanced up towards the tower windows - frond-ringed orifices covered by gelatinous membranes. “I don’t want to leave you here until I know what they’re gonna do. Even if he  _is_  working on a cure, never trust a Telvanni wizard who invites you into his tower, right? Every Ashlander kid learns that one. You go in to see the baby guar, and you end up… um…” He rubbed at his neck. “I’ll come in with you. Just to be sure.”  
  
“Would you?” Ire’s gaze was still glued to the bells. His hands had begun to shake.  
  
Julan, watching, set his jaw. “Listen, if you change your mind, and you want to leave, you can. This isn’t a prison. I don’t care what the law says, we can go somewhere else, far away. I’m not gonna let them lock you up again.” He gripped and regripped his sword hilt.  
  
Iriel nodded. He took a last look around him, at the ocean, the mushrooms, the sky, his friend’s face. He took a long, deep breath of fresh sea air, and he rang the bell.  
  



	159. security

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: I also finally remembered to post this here, [a background character-study thing of Iriel's parents](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10915545). Y'know, if you're into it.

“B'vek, feast your eyes on this stunning padomaic fibrosarcoma!”  
  
“Are you going blind in your old age? Certainly all these are anuic. If he was infected over a month ago, any padomaic sarcomas would be showing a far greater degree of–”  
  
“Take a closer look at it, Alfe, you great netch! It’s not just malignant, it’s obscene! Get over here and make a sketch.”  
  
Iriel sat very still in the hard, wooden examination chair, trying to do as he was told. If he did exactly as he was told, they would let him leave the restraints off.

The sharp-nosed Dunmer woman who’d answered the door had insisted he be restrained. She’d said it was a standard precaution, during initial assessment. Julan had objected, saying Ire wasn’t violent. She had stood firm, claiming victims were impossible to predict. Eventually, their warring voices had summoned the lord of the tower, from several fungal floors above.  
  
Divayth Fyr was so tall and broad-shouldered that his red silk dressing gown barely stayed closed, making his extraordinary physique difficult to miss. He shared the hawkish features and explosive brows of the door-keeper, though his hair (tumbling messily down his back) was white, while hers was black.  
  
“Delte, what’s all this?” he’d boomed. “Is this one giving you trouble already? Ten minutes, I said! Can I not take brief respite from my work, without someone menacing one of my daughters?”    
  
When the situation was explained, Fyr had directed a penetrating stare at Iriel. Then he’d laughed, white teeth flashing amid his close-cropped beard. “Ah, yes,” he cried, “sad but true! Corprus can make people get rather bitey. Of course, we all get a bit bitey from time to time, don’t we?” At this, he’d dived towards Delte, and buried his face in her neck, making exaggerated gnashing sounds. She’d rolled her eyes in silent exasperation, but hadn’t tried to stop him.  
  
Fyr, straightening up with a broad grin, had winked at Iriel. “Fear not, we shall take an alternate approach to security.” Lifting his chin, he’d bellowed towards the ceiling: “Get dressed, Alfe! Full armour!” Halfway out of the door, he’d called over his shoulder: “You too, Delte. I hate to conceal your assets, but safety first!”  
  
On his return, Fyr’s hair was bound into a topknot, and he was arrayed in a full suit of red-veined Daedric mail. A second woman had accompanied him into the room, clad in bonemould and holding a notebook and pencil. She had the same facial features as the other two Dunmer, albeit with bobbed brown hair, tousled and disarrayed. If she was Fyr’s assistant, she lacked the usual deference of the role, constantly interrupting him to criticise or contradict. Fyr, for his part, seemed to positively relish her insubordination. Currently, he was arguing with her about aspectual essences, leaning on the back of Iriel’s chair, gesticulating at her with a pair of callipers.  
  
“Your problem, Alfe, is that you’re basing your assumptions on our usual Dunmeri patients, who are, naturally, far more padodominant in aspectual nature. This is a wonderful opportunity to see how corprus affects an anudominant race like the Altmer! Such splendid luck!”  
  
“Congratulations,” growled Julan. Delte, also now in bonemould, gave him a dirty look from her post by the door. At this point, she was watching Julan far more closely than Iriel, evidently considering him the more immediate threat. Judging by his expression, she wasn’t wrong.  
  
“Padocytomas to upper and lower legs, in various stages of lorkhonecrosis. Minor anuic effluence and transdermal bilious flux.”  
  
Ire gleaned what comfort he could from his ever-increasing numb haze. They had taken his robe. They had taken his  _scarf_.  
  
With Iriel in a compromised state, it falls to your narrator to ensure our quota of tangentially-relevant scholarly commentary is met. Aspectual essence theory, then, was the belief that all things contained varying amounts of four fundamental forces, or essences: anuic, padomaic, lorkhanic and a fourth, the name of which differed across cultures. Iriel had learned it as “maran”, and indeed, that was the common term in most of the Empire at the time. Dunmer, however, preferred “mundean”, “nirnic” or even “vehkian”. Whatever the terminology, the aspect referred to is unifying, attracting and binding, standing in natural opposition to the sundering and divisive lorkhanic force.  
  
“Moderate keratosis of the right upper arm, with multiple squamous lesions continuing across the left shoulder. Possibly autophagic in origin… let’s find out, shall we? Open up!” An armoured finger tasting of fossilised godsblood wedged open his unresisting jaw. “Extraordinary! Cephalosis of the upper left cuspid! Alfe, are you getting all this?”  
  
Finally the physical interrogation ceased. He was given a plainweave robe, bleached pale from endless boil-washes until the stains had faded into dim-edged continents and archipelagos, old maps of distant pain.  
  
It wasn’t over. The probing became, if anything, more difficult to endure. Now, it demanded reciprocity.  
  
“What day is it today?”  
  
“I… don’t know.”  
  
“Of course he doesn’t know, he’s been lying in a cave for weeks!”  
  
“Alfe, one-ekem. Mark negative.”  
  
  
“What is your full name?”  
  
“Iriel. Of… of…”  
  
“He isn’t hesitating because he doesn’t know his own name, for Azura’s sake! He was exiled, so he’s not meant to call himself after his birthplace any more. Lillandril. Iriel of Lillandril.”  
  
“Do you mind? I cannot possibly test him if you’re feeding him the answers.”  
  
“I’m just trying to explain–”  
  
“Don’t. Alfe, one-hefhed, mark response as incomplete.”  
  
  
“Do you know where you are?”  
  
“Morrowind?”  
  
“Can you be any more precise?”  
  
“Um. In your tower?”  
  
“Do you know why you are here?”  
  
“I… I… hhh…”  
  
“Look, if you ask him like that, he’ll freeze up. He was like this before the corprus, it’s a jail thing. He can’t help it.”  
  
“Would you stop interrupting!”  
  
“I’m telling you, he knows why he’s here, it was his decision! But you’re scaring him with that voice, and these questions, he can’t–”  
  
“Must I have you removed? Do you wish me to admit your friend, or not?”  
  
  
“One more time: do you understand why you are here? …Alfe, four-doht: eye contact: negative, verbal: negative, all comprehensive signs: negative.”  
  
“He’s not that far gone, you’re making him act worse than he is! Ire, you’re safe. You’re not being arrested, he’s just asking you about things you know. And you  _do_  know them! We came with Helende, remember? In the horrible floating bug, because you–”  
  
“Listen. I know his condition is difficult to accept, but you must let me work. Delte, see him out.”  
  
“No! Please, I’ll… I’ll be quiet.”  
  
The storm of questions continued, buffeting Ire with words so swift and dense he couldn’t catch them. Instead, he raised his head far enough to meet Julan’s gaze from the other side of the room, and clung to it like an anchor, until the wind dropped. Until Fyr shrugged, Alfe closed her notebook with a snap, and they both disappeared upstairs again, the start of a new argument ringing back down the hollow stem tunnel to the upper mushrooms.  
  
  
  
Light filtered in through the walls, tinted a sour, astringent yellow. Delte returned to the tower entrance, and another woman arrived to show Iriel to the Corprusarium proper.  
  
“Welcome!” She smiled and inclined her head in greeting, white braids swinging. “I’m Beyte Fyr, wife of Divayth Fyr.” A twitch of the mouth, a shift of the eye. “One of them. Sort of.”  
  
Julan’s brows contorted in disbelief. “You’re Delte’s mother? You don’t look… I mean… I can see the resemblance, but…”  
  
“Oh no, I’m not anyone’s mother! We’re all Lord Fyr’s wives here. Not in the ‘married’ sense, you understand, but… you know. Consort. Paramour. Something like that.”  
  
“How… how many of you are there?!”  
  
“Um…” she plunged her hands into the pocket of her apron. “Depends how you’re counting, really.” At his expression, she laughed uncomfortably. “Never mind.”  
  
“But… didn’t Lord Fyr call Delte his daughter, before?”  
  
She smiled again, tight and defensive. “He does like to call us that, yes. Although it makes things a bit awkward to explain. He despises titles and conventional modes of address, you see. He’s the oldest, most respected wizard in House Telvanni, but he’d have everyone call him Divayth, if he could.”  
  
Julan blinked at her. “It’s just… you all look so–”  
  
“SO this is the main tower, obviously!” She flapped an arm around the moulded fungal antechamber, the walls curved and ochre-veined. “Over here is the hallway to Lord Fyr’s study, you’ll need levitation to get up there, but he’s always happy to talk to people. Down there’s the kitchen, that’s my domain, no inmates in there, if you please!” Spinning on her heel, she breezed off in another direction. “Follow me, now!”  
  
It was a simple request, but one Iriel found challenging. Hours in the chair had left his limbs and back achingly stiff, and his broken skin was raw from examination and sampling. As he tried to increase his pace, a claw of agony tore through his spine, and he cried out.  
  
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Beyte scurried back. “Hasn’t he been given anything for the pain? Standard magical healing agents tend to accelerate progression of the disease, so we avoid them, but we have skooma, or–”  
  
Julan frowned. “Skooma?”  
  
“Of course, if it would help. Even if addiction were possible, it’d be the least of his worries now.”  
  
“ _If_  addiction were possible?”  
  
“Lord Fyr says once corprus takes over a body, it sort of… locks down the cells against anything else. Skooma addiction can’t gain a foothold. The effects are much weaker, but he should still feel some pain relief.”  
  
Ire nodded, wincing. “Thank you… not right now, but… thank you. Just moving slower… is fine.”  
  
  
“It’s a cave.” Julan’s voice was flat, but shovelling more fury into every subsequent syllable. “Are you seriously telling me that he dragged himself hundreds of miles across Vvardenfell just to get dumped back into another blighted cave?!”  
  
Beyte flinched, and the steel-armoured Argonian by the gate gave a warning clink of his gauntlet against the blade of his axe.  
  
“I assure you,” Beyte said, “the Corprusarium may seem bleak, but in fact, it is well-suited to the needs of the inmates.”  
  
“Guarshit it is! So you and your Lord Fyr live in luxury up in that tower, but you leave the victims down here in the darkness to rot!”  
  
“Please–”  
  
“No!” Julan took a step towards her. “He’s not going in there! I don’t care what you–”  
  
A polished steel axe blade slid gently between them. “Beyte, my dear,” said the Argonian smoothly, “shall I explain the rules of the Corprusarium to our guests?”  
  
Relieved, she gestured towards him. “This is Vistha-Kai, our Warden. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you in his capable hands.” Smiling, she backed away into the tunnel, and was gone.  
  
The quiet gravitas of the tall, broad-horned Argonian was enough to hold even Julan’s belligerence in check. The Warden slowly replaced his axe at his belt, and turned to face them.  
  
“One of the rules of the Corprusarium,” said Vistha-Kai, “is that it exists to serve the needs of the inmates, not our preconceptions of what those needs should be. To us, it may seem dark and depressing. To the inmates, it is calming and comforting. To us, it is bleak and rough. To them, it is peaceful and predictable. You believe that we keep them underground out of callousness, but in fact, we have experimented with many forms of accommodation. This has proved most agreeable to them. Lord Fyr speculates that it relates to the origins of corprus in the mock-divine dream sendings of Dagoth Ur. They feel closer to him underground, where they can touch the raw flesh and bare bones of the volcano.”  
  
Julan glanced at Iriel, hunched and mute, hands tucked inside the sleeves of his pale robe. He looked up. Shrugged. “I… yes…” he husked. “I don’t… the Dream isn’t here, but it feels… easier… than upstairs.”  
  
Julan sighed, and turned back to Vistha-Kai. “Fine. You’d better tell me the rest of these rules, then.”  
  
“They are very simple. Do no harm to anyone. Regarding myself and the Fyr family, this is a simple thing to abide by, for we can well defend ourselves, and will not attack you without good reason. Regarding the inmates, it is another matter. Many of them no longer possess reason of any kind, and will attack you, unprovoked. The rule still holds. You must endure their attacks, and do no harm.”  
  
“Even if they try to kill me? Or him?” Julan’s hand had already crept, reflexively, to his sword.  
  
Vistha-Kai nodded. “Even so. But they will not harm a fellow sufferer, so you are the only one who need worry.” He smiled a serrated smile. “Fear not. Should you raise a hand against them, my axe will take the head cleanly from your shoulders, long before they can tear you limb from limb.”  
  
“Good to know.”  
  
“Perhaps you wonder why we value the lives of these poor, broken creatures more highly than those of the healthy. It is not so simple as that. We value our own safety very highly, hence the gate, hence our armour, hence our training in non-violent forms of control. But we are committed to our principles of care and compassion for the inmates. Yes, they are violent. Yes, they are angry, and wantonly cruel. But still, they are people, and they live and feel. They are in very great pain, and their violence is an involuntary expression of their suffering. It causes them to lash out, and harm others. Beyond these walls, there is no understanding for them, only retaliation and still more suffering. Here, we meet their violence with peace, we accept full responsibility for our own protection, and we provide what comfort to them we can.”  
  
“Please,” Iriel had been listening, wide-eyed throughout, but now he shuffled forwards. “Does your cave have water?”  
  
“Indeed, many shallow pools, for those who find it soothing.”  
  
“And… does it have… any mushrooms in?”  
  
Vistha-Kai tapped his gauntleted claws together a few times. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I believe some of the lower caverns have a number of fungal outcrops.”  
  
Iriel turned to Julan. He was smiling. “There,” he said. “There, you can stop worrying. I’m home.”  
  



	160. easy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You could listen to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnLol5gJWj4), if you wanted. Or not. I'm not the boss of you.

There was no terror in Iriel’s lost mind. The terror was in the melting adjacency where he was more lucid than lost, lucid enough to know what he’d lost. To see the howling voids in his selfhood, feel the encroaching fog corrode his edges, understand the inevitability of the incoming tide.  
  
His sea-born heart told him it was a cycle. Tides come in, but tides always go out again. And it was true, but every beachcombing Lillandril child knew that the tide’s residue changed, day on day. Each morning, Ire scoured the sands for the things he’d left there, trying to recall the shapes of what was missing. Perhaps something different had been tossed back to him, warped by the waters. Or dragged out to sea forever, or dashed and mangled on the rocks.

There had been a marker on the quay, near his father’s fish stall, showing the highest recorded waterline. Ire wished it were that simple to track his mental submersion, but some days, he was in no position to take measurements. Some drowning days, he couldn’t find the beach.  
  
He had a lighthouse. All of them did, the waterlogged sailors of the Corprusarium, a shining being they looked to for guidance and comfort in the storms. Severance from the Sharmat’s Dream was more painful to some inmates than others, but whether niggling hunger or all-consuming agony, none were immune to its loss. She filled the gap, eased the withdrawal. Became the new goddess of their underground shrine.  
  
Some inmates believed she was Almalexia, perhaps because of her red hair, even cropped short as it was. Almalexia in filthy apron and oilskin waders, soot smears on her nose from the campfires she built for them, kindling warmth in the depths of the earth. She went along with the religious delusion, if it made them happy. She did anything to make them happy. But her name was Uupse Fyr.  
  
Alone of the Fyrs, Uupse spent every day in the Corprusarium. Talked to them, listened to them, walked with those who desired motion, sat with those who craved stillness. She was soon familiar with Iriel’s history and interests - more than he was, at times. Today, she found him sitting in his favourite pool, frowning to himself. “Hello Iriel,” she said. “How are you feeling today?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He splashed a hand vaguely. “Like I should be setting up skulls on sticks. Like I finally understand his mother’s sense of humour.”  
  
“You seem restless. Would you like to come for a walk with me?” He nodded, and she offered a hand to help him up. Unlike the others, she never wore armour. The skin of her hand was rough, warm and as safe as they come.  
  
“I used to have lots of skulls,” he told her, “but I threw them in the sea, like a fool.”  
  
“Ai,” she sighed, grinning, “isn’t that always the way?”  
  
“Is what the way? Sorry, never mind.” He brushed at an algae stain on his dripping robe. “I’m too much and not enough, today. Those are the worst.”  
  
As they progressed along the tunnel, Uupse told him that there were other inmates who had emerged out of long periods of delirium, and regained their mental stability. That some lived for centuries, age and disease having no impact on a corprus-controlled body. “Really?” he asked.  
  
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” she said, and he believed her. Uupse always told them the truth, however painful. “It’s very rare, but it happens.”  
  
“Like who?”  
  
“Do you remember Yagrum? I introduced you to him, when you arrived.”  
  
“Oh… yes.”  
  
“Would you like to visit him? I’m sure he’d like that.”  
  
Ire recalled a firelit cavern, filled with rugs and furnishings. The staccato clinking of metal on rock, as Yagrum’s brass spider-chair bore his distended body from bookcase to desk. When Uupse had told him who Yagrum was, Iriel had began laughing uncontrollably. Once he’d explained why, Yagrum had started laughing, too.  
  
“The Last Living Dwarf meets the Dwemer researcher who found the secret to his race’s disappearance!” he’d crowed, voice cracked, but oddly musical, his accent like nothing Ire had ever heard.  
  
“And I meet the one person, ” Ire had gasped, “who could prove my theories right or wrong!”  
  
“But neither of us can remember a thing about any of it!”  
  
How they’d laughed.  
  
“I’d like to see him too,” he told Uupse, “but I’d feel too small and stupid talking to him, today.”  
  
“Very well. Let’s go and see who else wants company. Dramere adored it when you sang to her, and her pain has been very bad, of late.”  
  
When they reached the largest cavern, Beyte came trotting towards them from the entrance tunnel. “Uupse!” she cried, “we have a letter from Kahpe! She and Gamye are living on a little island near Tel Branora now! Gamye can move far more easily in water than on land, so she’s learned to pearl-dive, and Kahpe is selling them in the town. How funny, I can’t imagine!”  
  
Uupse beamed. “That’s wonderful. Have you told the others?”  
  
“Only Alfe and Delte. I thought… I thought you might want to tell the rest.”  
  
“You speak to them so rarely, my love. They miss you. They tell me so.”  
  
“Well… all right. But only Theyte and Tauhra, please… not Oomeghra. I can’t… she’s so… It’s too much for me, now. Please, Uupse, I–” She noticed Iriel behind Uupse, and snapped her mouth closed like a clam, gaze dropping to the floor. “Your friend’s waiting at the gate again,” she told him in a clipped monotone. “He won’t listen to me, so you need to tell him to stop.” With that, she scurried away.  
  
Uupse turned back to him, concern in her eyes. “Beyte may have a point about Julan. I know it’s hard, but it would be safer if he left Tel Fyr. Divayth won’t tolerate a healthy male guest in his Tower much longer. More importantly… my sisters and I cannot contract corprus, but the longer others remain here, the more likely it becomes.”  
  
“Why can’t you?”   
  
“Because in a sense, we already have it. We were engineered from its processes. Divayth grew us from infected samples of his own flesh.”  
  
He stared at her. His adoration made her beautiful in way that some might argue she was not, but she certainly wasn’t monstrous. “And that… worked?” he asked, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice.  
  
She looked back at him, calm and clear-eyed. “Eventually,” she said. “I am second-youngest, the result of many decades of experimentation. Some of my elder sisters did not survive long. Others lived, but their bodies are ill-suited to dwell in the Tower with the rest of the family. A few are down here. Others chose to build different lives, elsewhere.”  
  
She smiled thinly. “Poor Beyte. She finds it all rather shameful. Perhaps because she spends more time with visitors than I do, the conventions of the outside world impress upon her more strongly. It makes her uncomfortable that there are no easy words for the things we are to Divayth, and to each other. Sisters, lovers, wives, daughters, all these are strangers’ labels, applied for their benefit. She should spend more time with the inmates. She would learn what is truly important.”  
  
“And what is that?”  
  
“The alleviation of pain. Shame and secrecy are in opposition to it, for how can we soothe a wound we do not know is there?” A shrug. “It’s not her fault. We cannot help our differences. Divayth formed us for variance, after all. Alfe seeks new possibilities, and Delte keeps order. Beyte cares for the visitors, helping relatives let go of their loved ones and return to their lives. My place is with the inmates.”  
  
“What does Lord Fyr do?”  
  
“All, of course. He gave us our aspects, thus they originate in him. His work unites everything we do here into our overriding mission: using knowledge to make the world a better place.”  
  
Her candid sincerity gave him the confidence to ask: “What’s wrong with Oomeghra? Why is Beyte afraid of her?”  
  
Uupse looked down at the floor, her expression impossible to discern. “Nothing is wrong. Oomeghra is the last and, perhaps, the greatest of all the Fyrs. From the time she was born, her cells never stopped multiplying, in brain or in body. She is a genius. By the age of three, she had read every book in the Library, but no room could hold her. When they moved her into the lowest caverns, she began to grow into the stone itself, into the sea bed. That was… fifty-seven years ago. Alfe estimates that at her rate of expansion, she now extends across most of Zafirbel Bay.” She lifted her chin, with a smile. “Perhaps she’ll be the first of us to visit Kahpe and Gamye.”  
  
She walked with him through the upward slanting tunnels leading towards the gate. At the last turn, a sodden, grey-fleshed inmate lurched around the corner, flailing his arms blindly at Uupse. A fleshy impact echoed off the rock walls, and as she reeled backwards, there was blood on her lip.  
  
“You go on,” she called to Iriel, as he watched, frozen in horror. “I’ll distract him until he settles down again.” Her tone was nonchalant, and, his element of surprise gone, she easily dodged her assailant’s clumsy swings. “Faren, it’s me, Uupse. What’s the matter? Look at me, I’m here. Faren?”  
  
He wrenched his eyes away, and obeyed her, lumbering towards the gate, and collapsing damply against it, sliding to the ground.  
  
Julan’s voice rasped softly through the gaps between the wooden bars: “Hey.” He sounded closer than Ire had expected. As his eyes adjusted to the torchlight beyond the gate, he made out his friend’s low silhouette on the other side, hunched by the threshold. “Hey,” he echoed.  
  
“Is everything all right? I heard noises.”  
  
“The usual. Uupse’s handling it.”  
  
Behind Iriel, the sounds were already diminishing to whispers, gutteral moans and heavy footsteps slowly receding.  
  
“Where’s the Warden? Is he here?”  
  
“He went upstairs to eat. Said to call him if anything happened. D'you want me to–”  
  
“No, no. It’s fine.”  
  
  
  
“So, uh… how’re you doing? Been a while since I could talk to you.”  
  
“This is my clearest day in a long time. They’re getting rarer.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
  
  
“Julan, why are you still here? Are you waiting for me to die? Do you want me to hurry it up, or something?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Or is it that you think I’ll die if you leave, that sitting in the dark exchanging meaningless platitudes through a gate is the one thing I’m clinging to life for?”  
  
A dry chuckle. “You must be feeling more like yourself today. You’re being an asshole again.”  
  
“…I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
“No, it isn’t.”  
  
“Apology accepted, then.”  
  
  
  
“Listen, there’s no reason for you to stay. It won’t affect when I die, which could be in days or decades. That’s in the hands of the disease, not you.”  
  
“I’m not here because you’re going to die. I’m here because I want you to remember that you’re still alive. That this isn’t your life, you had more than this, once.”  
  
“Like what?” Laughter bubbled and failed in his throat. “Not very much, let’s face it.”  
  
  
  
“Don’t you have more important things to do?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Liar. I… remember, now. How it ended between us. You aren’t supposed to be here at all. You were supposed to have a better option.”  
  
“Not better, just easier. And when in my life did I ever pick the easy option?”  
  
“Always the martyr. Do you see, now, why I have to push you away? I _want_ to make it easier for you. You mustn’t feel guilty about leaving me here. I’m losing more and more. Soon, I won’t notice. I won’t even remember. The fog will fill the gap where you used to be.”  
  
“You really think that’s comforting, don’t you?”  
  
“Sorry. I’m terrible at comforting. You might have to tell me how to do it.”  
  
“You shouldn’t be comforting me, you’re the one who’s ill! But… look, please stop talking about how you’re going to lose your mind, because you don’t know that.”  
  
“True, there’s always hope. I could die first. Or you could kill me. I could suddenly attack, and you’d have to chop my head off.”  
  
“Is this still you trying to be comforting?! Anyway, it’s against the rules.”  
  
“Well, it’s an awful rule. I wantto be stopped, when I hurt people, I don’t care if I’m doing it unintentionally! I’d  _rather_ die! Can’t you do it now? Before it comes to violence and mindlessness, can’t you spare me that?”  
  
“No, I can’t!”  
  
“You callous bastard.”  
  
“Maybe. But you always think you’re worse than you really are. So… I need to be sure. That it really was hopeless, that… it wasn’t just you giving up on yourself, taking the easy way out.”  
  
“You’d deny me that? If you don’t get easy options, I don’t either? Gods…”  
  
The sum total of his situation hit him like a cannonball of absolute reality. He crumpled, gasping, into the damp junction of gate and floor, where his tears soaked into the dirt.  
  
“Why did you make me remember? Why didn’t you leave me in that first cave? I was numb, I was nothing. I could have slipped away in the darkness. It could have been so easy. Why did you give me back all these things I can’t keep?”  
  
Breaths coming jagged now on both sides of the gate, words breaking down. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“You said you were going to protect me.”  
  
“I don’t know how, any more. I’m sorry.”  
  
Nothing coherent for a while, then Julan’s voice seeping through the cracks again, weak and unravelling. “I wasn’t lying, before. I  _don’t_  have anything better to do. I have things I should do, but I can’t. I can’t do it alone, and I always knew it, but back then, I didn’t care. You made me want to do it right, but I don’t know how. I can’t save people. I can’t even save  _one_  person. I’m not here because you need me. It’s the other way, it always was. You were right. Helende was right. I’m just… using you as…” The rest of the sentence was swallowed in a sob.  
  
Ire sat up. “Guarshit! When… when will you stop believing everything anyone ever tells you about yourself? Listen, I  _know_ why you’re here.”  
  
A long, wet sniff, muffled by a sleeve. “Don’t give me too much credit. I’m here because I don’t know which thing I’m wrong about yet. I only know being wrong about staying is better than being wrong about going. And I’m going to be wrong about something, so… you’ll just have to be mad at me. Better that, than… than I left, and you…”  
  
“Shhh, I know why you’re here. Never doubt it.”  
  
Ire leaned into the gate until his lips brushed the bars. “Would it make it better or worse if I told you I loved you? Now that doesn’t matter any more, which would you prefer, what would make it easier?”  
  
A long sigh. “Iya… you could at least  _pretend_ that the stuff you say counts for anything. But we both know it’s either delirious rambling you’ll be embarrassed by later, or any old scuttle you think will help, so just… don’t. Because it does matter.”  
  
“Because you’re still foolish enough to think I’m not going to die?”  
  
“That, too.”  
  
  
  
“You’re determined to stay? Even… even though…”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You don’t have to.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’m being well taken care of.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“You don’t want to stay here, and–”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“You really don’t.”  
  
After a pause: “Remember when you said I didn’t know how to set limits on what I’d put up with from you?”  
  
“You still don’t, if… if  _lorkhanecrosis_ , and leaking, swelling horror, and pado….cyc… sar… if  _anything_  aboutthis is remotely acceptable.”  
  
“I’m setting one now. Listen, it’s a good one. Here goes: you can’t tell me what I want, or how I really feel about things. Because most of the time you’re talking guarshit, and even when you’re right, you’re still being an asshole.”  
  
“Julan, you’re only setting a limit if you’re prepared to do something if I cross it. Are you?”  
  
“Maybe we don’t find out. Maybe you just stop doing it, instead. Think you can do that?”  
  
“I’ll try. If it’s a last request.”  
  
“It’s not. Not even close to last. I’ve had plenty of time to think these up, you know. And I’m not done yet, so you can’t go dying. I’m not leaving till I’ve told you all of them. Here’s another: don’t ever again try and tell me I want you to be weak and helpless.” A brief, hoarse laugh. “It wasn’t true before, and now it feels like the worst joke in the world.”  
  
“I might not be able to remember all these.”  
  
“Then I’ll tell you again, tomorrow.”  
  



	161. cured

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains (non-detailed) attempted suicide and depression. Please take care of yourself if this may be triggering for you. It's uphill from here, I swear.

On the day that Iriel was cured of corprus, it was supposed to be a routine checkup. Lord Fyr regularly summoned inmates up to the examination room for inspection, in Ire’s case, no longer bothering with restraints or guards. Julan had made himself scarce, knowing Ire preferred privacy. He was probably helping Beyte in the kitchen, or prying tales of excitement out of Vistha-Kai.

Fyr was leaning on the table, flourishing a vial. He was debating the hypotheticals of an experimental treatment he had concocted. It had killed all previous test subjects, so he saved it for extreme cases. Ire was not yet, in his opinion, an extreme case, but Fyr enjoyed hearing himself talk, and wanted Iriel to understand the possibilities. Iriel understood one thing clearly: the potion acted instantly, and would (perhaps) cure him, or (very likely) kill him. When Fyr left him unattended to bellow instructions up to Alfe, who was failing to retrieve the correct set of charts, Ire seized his opportunity. He drained the vial without hesitation, terrified only that someone would return in time to stop him. Such as Julan, demanding arguments about survival odds, or emotional farewells, neither of which he could bear.  
  
  
On the day that Iriel was cured of corprus, he didn’t feel any different. Everyone else was so delighted by his obvious, miraculous physical improvement that it seemed churlish to say anything. Fyr bounced up and down on his toes, shouting triumphant dictation to Alfe, who scribbled into a notebook, beaming. Julan hugged him as if he would never let go. At the centre of the whirlwind, Iriel… existed, static and still. Fyr ascribed his blank non-reaction to shock, and Ire supposed he was right.  
  
  
On the day that “Iriel” was cured of corprus, he was allowed a mirror, for the first time in many weeks. He expected to be appalled, braced himself for horror. To see something unrecognisable.  
  
He saw an elf. He saw amber eyes, the ones his mother bewailed, because he should have inherited her green ones, a colour considered more highblood, on the Altmeri sanguinary hierarchy. He saw the nose, that she criticised for the irregularity in its bridge, the slight upturn: too much fisherman, not enough nobility. He saw his jawline, weakish; his cheekbones, better. Still apparent, despite the bloating of the flesh that covered them. Still signs of his bone-deep, relentless permanence, of all the things no one had ever been able to take from him, no matter how many thieves he knew.  
  
Not that there were _no_ changes. His skin was pale, tissue-thin in places. The blood vessels visible beneath were a colourless grey, capillaries spreading like leaden lacework, pooling into ash-stain bruises. His hair… his hair should probably be shaved again, for the sake of regularity.  
  
Yes, there were certainly changes. He looked old and sick and ugly. He didn’t think he’d be fending off Khajiiti girls in taverns any time soon. Everyone petted and consoled him - his hair would grow back, the last of the swelling would subside. He didn’t know how to explain that he didn’t care, that none of it was the problem. That the sight in the mirror was, if anything, too jarringly familiar. He couldn’t say that. It made no sense.  
  
  
On the day that Iriel was cured of “corprus”, Fyr confessed that he had never truly intended to cure him. Corprus was a fascinating condition with many beneficial effects that demanded further study. The potion did not _remove_ corprus from the body or mind, it merely rendered it passive within the cells, removing the physical signs, and the possibility of contagion. It was, in effect, an illusion. He had swallowed an invisibility potion.  
  
  
On the day that Iriel was “cured” of corprus, he understood that there was no cure for corprus, just as there was no cure for skooma addiction. That his life would not involve cures, only an accumulation of symptoms, and a leaching decline in capacity. An endless, crawling drag forwards, amid ever more frequent and debilitating backward falls. Something inside him ruptured like a cyst.  
  
On the day that Iriel was cured of corprus, he tried to kill himself three times. The first time, nothing happened, his body no longer reacting to poisons in a predictable manner. The second time, he was discovered, but managed to pass it off as a hair shaving mishap. The third time was harder to explain, and resulted in unpleasant scenes. When exhaustion silenced him, he was released, but no longer allowed to be alone. Fyr, dictating copious notes to Alfe, diagnosed temporary psychosis, as a side effect of the treatment. Iriel said nothing to discourage this opinion. Julan had extracted promises from him, but the general reaction had been guilt-inducing enough. He would not try again.  
  
  
On the “day” that Iriel was cured of corprus, he lost all sense of time. One day smeared into the next, in fuzzy, disjointed procession. He was resigned to his continued existence, but he had no investment, no connection to it.  
  
He watched the sunset from a curving shelf of fungal balcony, extruded from the highest point of Tel Fyr. He looked at the view. At the sun, the sea, the sky and the clouds. It was exquisite. The interplay of hue, texture and light could have kept poets going for hours. The warm, ash-tinged wind caressed his cheeks. Julan’s arm tightened around his. It was far more to do with security than romance, but still. He tried not to spoil it. Tried to pretend he felt something. He knew better than to look at Julan’s face. He looked at the clouds.  
  
The world itself was wonderful, he decided. Being alive was, objectively, wonderful. Life was beautiful, in the way that a colour was beautiful, or a finely embroidered robe. It just… didn’t suit him. He loved life on other people, but it didn’t fit him. He didn’t fit it. He never had, and the more he’d tried to bridge the divide separating him from whatever he was supposed to be, the more he’d lost his balance. Now, he’d slipped into the gap.  
  
  
On the day that Iriel was cured of corprus, he didn’t get better at all.


	162. can't

_From Second Incept, orbit withershins through modes three to six, finishing in retrograde Atronach aspect with left thumb in subordinal position. Ensure the stressed syllables of the mantra fall on the thaumakinetic apex of each phrasomorph._  
  
Iriel read the Water Walking spell again. It was a very basic Alteration form. He had learned it long ago, but his mind had lost it, so Fyr had lent him a book. It still wouldn’t work. He could imitate the finger positions and recite the words, but the magic wouldn’t come.

At least with the meticulous instruction of the Altmeri method, he had something to do, while he failed. He’d tried the Cyrodiilic approach of attempting to dominate the Aurbis through Will alone, and it had been a complete non-starter. He’d stared at the sea, and the sea had stayed stubbornly liquid.  
  
He failed at Altmeri Alteration because, despite following the diagrams, he lacked the necessary grasp of the underlying processes, the germ of cosmic comprehension that was key to editing the universe. He failed at Cyrodiilic Alteration because he lacked the Will. Any will, regardless of capitalisation.  
  
He’d tried other schools. Destruction, Mysticism, Conjuration, even his old nemesis Restoration. He couldn’t channel the spark. Only Illusion refused to abandon him, in a broken, unconscious sort of way. He looked at his hands. Without any effort on his part, they were fading from view again. It was dimly comforting, not having to see them. He put the book down on the wooden jetty, before it slipped through his fingers. He was terribly clumsy, lately.  
  
“Ire?” Julan emerged from the Tower behind him, casting a frantic eye up and down the docks.  
  
Just as he turned back inside, Iriel said, “I’m here.”  
  
Julan stared straight through him, brow furrowed.  
  
“Julan? Over here.”  
  
He blinked. “There you are! I was looking everywhere, thought you might’ve–”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I don’t mean I was worried, I just mean… um.” He flicked his eyes away, adjusted his pauldron. “So, Lord Fyr says you can go home today.”  
  
“Oh.” Iriel absorbed the sentence with blank detachment. “All right.”  
  
“Do you want to go and get ready now, or…?”  
  
Ire considered for a moment. “I don’t have anything to pack,” he said, “so I’m ready.”  
  
“I… guess so.” Julan didn’t look convinced. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to anyone? To Uupse, at least?”  
  
Another pause. “I suppose I should.” He began a series of slow, calculating movements, progressing along the path to the Tower door. Julan stood carefully aside to let him pass.  
  
  
  
Somewhere amid his farewells to the denizens of the Corprusarium, a thought entered Iriel’s mind. By the time he had offered formulaic thanks to Lord Fyr, it had expanded to fill his consciousness. When he returned to the docks, his numbness had solidified into an icy core of paralysing dread.  
  
Julan took one look at him. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“Can’t what?”  
  
Ire stood frozen to the doorstep, eyes screwed shut like a sacrificial victim on a cliff edge. “Go back. I can’t.”  
  
“Sure you can. It’s not far, and we don’t have to ride in a blighted bugthing this time.” Julan pointed to the brawny Imperial shipmaster, checking the ropes of her vessel. “Cinia’s going to take us to Sadrith Mora, when she goes for supplies. We can cast Intervention if you want, but I thought you might enjoy the boat trip.”  
  
“No! I mean… the city. I can’t. They’ll see me.”  
  
“Well, yeah. People are gonna see you. I know you hate it, but you look normal, it’ll be fine. I’m looking at you, aren’t I? Does it hurt?”  
  
“It’s different, when you do it.” He opened his eyes. “You  _are_  coming with me, aren’t you?”  
  
Julan was dreugh-armoured and guarskin-booted, sword at his hip and a bulging pack slung over his back. “I’ll take you home to Muriel’s. You’ll be OK there.”  
  
“And then?”  
  
“I’ll have to go, but you’ll still be OK. Helende and that Darothril guy will be there.”  
  
“And all the others, making noise, asking questions, peering at me.” Ire’s face contracted in revulsion. “Celegorn might put his  _fingers_ on me. He does that. Oh gods.” He sucked air through his clenched teeth a few times. “Please don’t make me.”  
  
“I’m not making you do anything.” Julan lowered his pack to the ground, and held it steady against his leg. There was a bedroll strapped to the top, only one. “But they know how to take care of you, and I have things to do.”  
  
“Better things?”  
“No. Just things.”  
“I can’t go with you?”  
“No.”  
  
Julan’s face had a stonewall quality Ire had last seen in the Ashlands.  _You should be relieved. You wanted him to protect himself from you, and he’s finally learned._  He told himself that, but had no strength to stop himself saying, “Please?”  
  
It didn’t work. The most Iriel got, after a long silence and a heavy sigh, was a delay of the inevitable.  
  
“Fine,” Julan’s voice was as guarded as his expression. “Here’s what we’ll do. We won’t take the boat, we’ll water walk over the bay, instead. You’ll get an extra day or two to prepare yourself. But I’m still taking you home.”  
  
  
  
“Don’t touch me! Please. I can… I’m…”  
  
“I know. Sorry.” Julan took another step backwards, and Iriel placed a second tentative foot onto the water’s surface. It supported him, even carrying the bag of supplies Beyte had swiftly assembled. The Water Walking potions had been Julan’s idea, cadged from Alfe. “I can cast it now,” he’d said. “It’s a bit like keeping water out of your nose when you’re swimming, except with your feet. Or your brain, or whatever. Still, the potions will make things easier.”  
  
  
Iriel tramped across the bay, feeling like an automaton. Hollow, yet moving. Nothing inside to power a spell, or even a thought. Moving, nevertheless. Something like a soul gem, perhaps, still animated him. The crystallised ghost-memory of someone else.  
  
Julan marched silently ahead of him. He would gradually increase his pace, then stop and turn, guilt shadowing his eyes for a moment. Once Iriel had caught up, he marched on again.  
  
Ire would have left well enough alone, but he lacked the self-preservation.  
  
“Do you hate me?”  
  
Swift and automatic: “Of course not.”  
  
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t blame you.”  
  
A fraction too much hesitation. “You weren’t well.”  
  
“But you don’t want to stay with me any more.”  
  
“It’s not about what I want. You’re still not well.”  
  
  
As they crossed a sandbar, a mudcrab lunged at Ire from the shallows. He watched, paralysed, as it snapped at his ankles, tore through the hem of his pants. Recognised pain, as it grazed his shin. He knew he should do something, but he couldn’t think what. Everything seemed to happen faster than he could keep up with.  
  
With a sharp crack, the mudcrab flew upwards, landing on its back a few feet away. Julan, striding after it, kicked it again, this time into the sea. When he was sure it didn’t plan on returning, he turned to Iriel with an exasperated look. Ire dropped his gaze to the sand, overwhelmed by uselessness.  
  
It was an insipid, gluey sort of overwhelmment, like drowning in wallpaper paste. There was no vicious, self-hating bite to it, no flood of acrid, heart-clenching despair. Only a quiet, neutral observation of the facts.  _Julan was right. You’re nothing but a liability. You shouldn’t be here._  
  
“You OK?”  
  
“Yes.”  _Too fast. He’s suspicious. You have to pretend to consider the question._  
  
“Your ankle’s bleeding.”  
  
“…Oh. …Yes.”  
  
“D'you want me to heal it?”  
  
“Um… If… if you want to?”  
  
A dead-eyed stare. “It’s  _your_  ankle.”  
  
A healing spell, a brief rest on the sand. Obedient mouthfuls of bread, guar-jerky and pickled yams, another Water Walking potion. Then onwards over the smooth-rippled sea, bright with the midday sun.  
  
  
He felt things, for a while. The glare of reflected sunlight beneath his feet. The phantom sting of his healed ankle. The heaviness of food in his stomach, dull and distant as guilt. They soon faded. When he couldn’t feel his own footsteps, inertia carried him on.  
  
Until he fell into the sea. Was suddenly dropped into lurching freefall, plunging through the surface and into the water, sun-warmed but still cool enough to shock, sucking in a last breath before his head went under.  
  
A few feet down, he kicked automatically, felt the weight of his pack slip from his shoulders. As he watched his bag sink away, he saw a flicker beneath him, a red-dark mottled shadow curving away against the sand.  
  
He was rising up again, when it caught him. The dreugh’s tentacles clamped, slick-muscled, around his waist and legs. It would hold him underwater until he drowned, then tear him apart for food. Ire knew this. The knowledge was little help. His legs were locked immobile, and so, in their way, were his spells. Above him, he heard Julan slamming his sword into the surface, but his unexpired Water Walking potion still denied him access.  
  
His lungs ached to release their hoard of depleted air, and welcome in the sea. He’d known a spell for that, once, but no longer. Ire hadn’t planned to die, but he saw no alternative. Why prolong the discomfort?  
  
Something small and hard bumped against his head. He reached up. A Daedric dagger, sinking gently downwards.  
  
“STAB IT!!!” Julan had backed away, so his spell would stop solidifying the water beneath the dagger, but his voice was still stridently audible. “STAB IT IN THE FACE!!!”  
  
Ire slowly repositioned the dagger until its hilt nestled into his hand. He looked down. There was the dreugh’s mouth, with its thousand, multi-rowed, serrated teeth.  
  
“IRE!!! STAB IT, COME ON!!!”  
  
He looked at the dagger. Only one tooth, but a sharp one.  
  
“DO IT!!!”  
  
He stabbed it in the face.  
  
He was trapped in a tangle of flailing tentacles, water clouded with dark blood, darker ink.  
  
He was free, flailing, losing sensation, vision, water in his nose, clogging his throat.  
  
He was dragged, through a half-conscious maelstrom of blinding sea and blinding light, everything fading in and out in an air-starved whirl.  
  
He was on a beach, on hands and knees, vomiting water.  
  
He was rolling sideways, pale blue sky sliding across his vision, his legs still immersed.  
  
He was looking into Julan’s frightened face, feeling his shoulders shaken and gripped. “Iya, I don’t hate you! I love you, but it’s not enough, it didn’t work!” Panting, dripping seawater from his hair. “And I’m really, really scared, because I can’t be the only one keeping you alive! You have to do it too, and if you can’t, then you need to be with people who can, because I can’t do it alone!”  
  
When Ire didn’t respond, Julan let go of him and moved out of sight. Ire pushed himself into a sitting position in the shallow water. When he next looked up, Julan had retreated a few feet up the beach. “I can’t keep you safe,” he said. “I thought everything was better, but it never ends.”  
  
“I know.” Ire was still holding the dagger. He wrapped both hands around the hilt, one on top of the other. “But… it’s not your job to keep me safe. It never was.”  
  
“That’s not true. For a while, it was.” A pause, then a raised eyebrow and a half-hearted smirk. “You still owe me that stupid  _reference_.”  
  
“What… ref…? Oh  _gods_ …” Ire collapsed backwards onto the shore. “I couldn’t write you a shopping list, now.”  
  
“I don’t want you to write me anything.”  
  
Ire turned over and propped himself up on his elbows. His shorn hair made his eyes seem larger, magnifying their anxious confusion. “What  _do_  you want?”  
  
“I told you. For you to go home.” Julan yanked off a boot and tipped out a quantity of water. “I’m going to head south, through the islands. They don’t call this Azura’s Coast for nothing - her biggest shrine is meant to be here, somewhere. I’m sick of relying on Mother’s visions. If Azura wants me to be her damned champion, she  _has_ to tell me what I need to do.” He shook the boot until a small shell fell out. “See? I have a plan. But I don’t have one for keeping you safe, so you’re not coming with me.”  
  
Ire was silent for a moment, examining his fingers against their background of coarse-grained sand. “And… if… if I wasn’t… unsafe? What would you want from me then?”  
  
Julan was staring out to sea, boot half-on. “When did honesty become such a complicated thing?” he finally said. “I thought it was meant to be the good way, the simple way. So why does it feel selfish, like you’re pushing a burden on someone they’d be better off without? It’s only easy when it doesn’t matter.”  
  
Abruptly, he shot Ire a pointed glance. “I could ask you the same question. You’re asking me to stay, but why? Because you know you can twist me around your finger? Come on Ire, you only ever want me around when you need help. And you know I’m the sort of help you can fool when it suits you, which is why it has to be someone else, this time.”  
  
Ire pushed his fingers into the sand. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what you want, now. Whatever you might have wanted from me… none of it’s here any more.”  
  
“That’s not true. Iya, I only want you to be yourself.”  
  
“Exactly. I can’t. There’s not enough left to fill that shape.”  
  
“You don’t need to do that! Listen, I  _want_  to stay with you. I can handle being alone, I always could, but… I hate it. And, out of everyone, I like it best when I’m with you. I  _want_  you to come with me. But what you need is more important than what I want. That’s not me playing the martyr, as you call it, it’s the truth. And as long as you’re safe, I don’t need anything else. You don’t have to…  _be_ things for me. You’re you, and that’s enough.”  
  
“It’s not, though. You deserve more than… than the scraps of my scraps.”   
  
“I know, but… so do you _._ ”  
  
Ire picked up the dagger again, and squeezed it. After a while, he raised his head. “I can do it. I can keep myself safe, but… if that changes, and I can’t, I’ll tell you. And I’ll go home, and let myself be kept safe. I promise, so… please. Don’t let this be why you go.”  
  
“If I agree,” Julan said slowly, “then you have to be honest with me. About everything, how you feel, if you’re really OK or not. That’s what I want from you. Can you be that?”  
  
Ire gave the question solemn consideration. “I think… I can.” A bleary attempt at a shrug. “I’ll hurt you, but I’m hurting you anyway. Ask me anything. You don’t even need to bribe me with skooma hits.”  
  
Julan stared at him for a few seconds, then broke off his gaze with a short, dry release of breath. “I’m not sure what I want to know any more.”  
  
“Now that it matters again?”  
  
“It doesn’t, though! I don’t expect… it’s not… nothing depends on what you say to me! I’ll still do whatever I can to help you. I don’t need to know if–”  
  
“Ask me if I love you.”  
  
“…Do you?”  
  
“No. I can’t. There’s not enough of me. Ask me if I ever loved you.”  
  
“…Did you?”  
  
“Yes. Very much. I can’t feel it, but I remember.” Ire shuffled closer, across the sand. “Ask me what I want from you.”  
  
“…What?”  
  
“I want you to stay, please. I want you to sit with me in the dark, for a little while longer.” Ire still had the dagger curled into one palm, but the other was open as he reached out. “I want you to hold my hand.”  
  
“OK.”


	163. stones

His mind was a house full of locked rooms. Familiar rooms, cluttered with things that he used to have access to, but the doors were now closed and unyielding. He remembered what was in the rooms. He told himself that those things were still there, waiting. That one day, the doors would open again. And on that day, there would be something surviving, in those sealed rooms, something incorruptible by time or decay, something beyond dust and ashes.  
  
His mind was a winter garden. Barren, but peaceful. Filled with grey mists that covered and protected. With paths that led in softly twisting circles, his safe daily walks. Other paths, that he knew led into shifting quagmires and sudden drops. When he found himself on those paths, he tried to slow down. The alternative routes were overgrown, snow-bound, mist-filled, but with time, he learned to stop walking. To sit. To run his hands across the stones laid across the ground beneath him, into which he had carved certain names. He would read those names, until he found the strength to turn back.

For slipping, gripless cords of time, he existed in these narrow corridors of awareness, shallow pools of diluted sensation. Waking, dimly surprised by his own consciousness. Sleeping, not feeling its lack. It was all one, and in between, he moved through the world.  
  
He reminded himself of facts, evidence, patterns. Of the improbability of any one state lasting forever. Ultimately, though, it was faith that kept him going. A fickle, ephemeral thing, it felt, but he clung to the hope that he had been right, when he’d told Viatrix that faith was purer, when it was a struggle to live up to. When you felt yourself unworthy of it. Iriel recognised the futility of trying to put faith in himself. Instead, he put faith in his memories, faith in the inevitability of change, and faith in the names he’d carved into the stones.


	164. late

“I’d like to see Tilde,” Iriel said, one night by the camp-fire. It was the first thing he’d said for some hours, and Julan looked up from his mending. He drew the needle taut again, shifting his jaw, then jabbed it back into the leather greave-strap he was re-attaching, with an emphasis on durability over precision of stitch. “OK,” he said. “I guess… it might be time to head back, if you’re ready to face the cities.”  
  
“What about the shrine of Azura?”  
  
Julan shrugged, eyes on his work. “It was stupid to think I could just find it, without any real directions. I think we’ve wasted long enough out here.” He didn’t sound too concerned, and he smiled as he added: “I’m still getting the hang of this whole ‘planning’ thing.”  
  
He yanked on a knot, and bit off the end of the thread. “We can head over there whenever you like. Think my Almsivi Intervention charm’d take us to Molag Mar. Maybe we can guild-travel from there.”  
  
“Thank you.” Ire laced his fingers, and returned to watching the logs of shroomwood crumble into the flames.  
  
  
There was no Mages’ Guild in Molag Mar, but there was a silt strider port. They reached Balmora late the following evening, rain-clouds squatting over the ranks of yellowstone steps and roof-terraces, shadowing the streets still further.  
  
A man was sitting on the bench of the strider-port, wrapped in a heavy, hooded cloak. His head hung forwards over his knees, and Iriel paid him no mind until Julan, staring at a black-stoned gold ring on the human’s pale finger, whispered: “Isn’t that…?”  
  
Caius Cosades’ chin jerked upwards with a half-conscious snort. His face a concentration of surliness, he scrutinised Iriel through the drizzling rain. “Thought you were dead,” he slurred. “Dead, and run off with my good cloak.” He wiped rainwater from the furrows of his brow.  
  
Ire’s mouth fell open. He had forgotten about this possible local complication. “Sorry,” he faltered.  
  
Cosades flicked a dripping hand at him. “Don’t be. Agents who’re… who aren’t _dead_ … are my favourite kind.”  
  
Julan twitched a bemused eyebrow. “Is he actually high this time? He’s not usually so… open.”  
  
Ire swallowed. “I don’t think this is skooma. I think he’s _drunk_.”  
  
As they watched, Cosades swayed upright, and transferred his narrow-eyed scrutiny to Julan. Suddenly, he lunged forwards, swinging a wild right hook towards Julan’s jaw. Seeing it coming, Julan dodged - right into a lightning-fast finger-jab from the Spymaster’s other hand. He reeled back with a yelp, clutching an eye.  
  
Cosades, smirking, slumped back onto the bench. “That,” he said, “is from all my agents who had to resubmit their expense claims to me, because you, guar-brained incompetent that you are, stole them from my office!”  
  
“I was right, though,” growled Julan, blinking but unblinded. “You _were_ up to something.”  
  
“Indeed.” Cosades spread his hands. “But now, I am not. Now, none of the many, many things to which I was _up_ , are equal to a plate of scuttle, therefore I, as you so keenly observed, find myself with a severe shortfall in my ability to care.”  
  
Julan squinted his way around the bends and loops of the sentence. “You’re not a spy any more?”  
  
“Recalled. That’s the official line. To Cyrodiil. Immediately, which is why,” Cosades held up a finger, “I was forced to drink these bottles of exceptional brandy, rather than face carrying them.”  
  
“You’re leaving Morrowind? So… does that mean Iriel is free, he doesn’t have to do what you tell him any more?”  
  
“Iriel is free,” proclaimed Cosades, “to do whatever the blighted bugshit he likes. For all I care, he can be the new Grand Spymaster of Vvardenfell.” His eyes widened. “I hope he has better luck with it than I did, by Talos!”  
  
Iriel was threatening to bite through his lip. There was something terrifying about Caius Cosades not caring what he did any more. He’d longed for this, so why did he feel like a child who’d lost his mother in the marketplace, all lurching abandonment and imminent catastrophe? “What happened?” he whispered. “Why recall you?”  
  
Cosades’ face soured. “Internal politics. Some trouble about my sugar, but that’s a pretext. It’ll be the succession, rearing its - or should I say, their - ugly heads again.”  
  
“And… your Nerevarine plan…?”  
  
“Is shot to Oblivion.” Cosades shook his head, expression sagging. “It’s too late, now. The days of the Empire are numbered. When the Emperor dies, nine hells’re going to break loose. None of this will mean a damn thing.”  
  
“So you never did care about saving Morrowind.” Julan’s voice was cold. “If it won’t benefit his Majesty, there’s no point trying to defeat Dagoth Ur.”  
  
Cosades stared at him for a long time. “I’ve been on this ash-heap for more than a decade,” he said, finally. “Studying its history, understanding its present. Trying to shape its future. I thought about refusing the recall. But they have members of my family back in the capital.”  
  
“Blackmail?” Julan curled his lip. “I’d expect no less from those corrupt bastards, but even to their most loyal?”  
  
Cosades’ eyes froze solid. “The Empire’s methods are no crueller than yours, Dunmer,” he said. “I don’t recommend you stand in high judgement - you’ll slip and fall on your smug face. I’m in no mood to listen to a lecture on Dunmeri enlightenment, given what I’ve lost to it. A valuable source… and a good friend.” His voice became empty, head sinking into his hands. “Mehra. They got her. She wasn’t careful enough… or I wasn’t.”  
  
“What?!”  
  
“The Temple. Dragged her off to the Heretic Moon. People don’t come out of there. So even if I wanted to keep digging up dead heroes to shove convicts into their boots, I couldn’t. She was our path to the lost prophecies.”  
  
His head snapped up again. “You two can do what you like, but I’m done. On the next boat out of here, and if you’ve half a brain, you’ll do the same. One of these days, the thrice-damned Tribunal are going to get what’s coming to them, and in their pride, they’ll take everyone else down with them. Don’t doubt it.”  
  
The strider was preparing to depart. The Spymaster fumbled for a bag under the bench, and staggered towards the boarding platform. “Farewell, Iriel. The Emperor thanks you for your faithful service.”  
  
It was hard to tell how sarcastic his words were, but when he leaned over the shell of the bug to address them one last time, his tone was genuine, and his expression sincere. “And for whatever it’s worth… I’m sorry about what happened to the South Wall. Good place, good people. I’ll miss it.”  
  
Neither of them moved a muscle, as they watched the strider jerk away from the stand.


	165. friend

“Let go of me.”  
“I’m not holding you.”  
“Let g… let me g–!”  
“I’m not touching y–!”  
“OUT. Let me go OUT.”  
  
“No!” Two steps up, Julan blocked the staircase, one hand braced on each wall. “Not until you calm down!”  
  
Iriel, arms loose at his sides, met his eye. “I am calm.”  
  
“I don’t know  _what_  you are! What in Oblivion d'you think you’re going to do?!”  
  
“I’m going to kill them. All of them.”  
  
“You can’t! How?!”  
  
“I don’t know. I’ll find out. They’ll find out.” Iriel slotted words together in mechanical sequence, like cogs. Like pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t see the shape of, yet, but he’d found an edge, and was determined to follow it.

“Let me go out,” he said, again. He spoke quietly, evenly, but Julan’s arms only tightened against the smoke-blackened walls. Their hands and faces were smeared with ash, and alien in the false light of the Night Eye effect. “Move.”  
  
“Not if you’re gonna go straight to the blighted Council Club!”  
  
“You don’t understand. I’m going to kill them.”  
  
“I DO understand! But what d'you think’s going to happen? You can’t cast spells, and there’s dozens of them in there, armed to the teeth! You’re not even angry properly. Not that it’d help if you were, trust me. You’ll die. And you  _promised_  me.”  
  
He glared at Iriel until the latter swivelled on his heel, and stalked away, vanishing into the darkness of the underground bar-room. Julan released the breath he’d been holding, and followed.   
  
Julan’s footsteps were the only sound in the building. The ashes were cold, but the air still reeked with smoke and fumes. As the visibility spell extended around him, he made out Iriel behind the bar, arms wrapped around his chest.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ire whispered. “But I have to.”  
  
Julan leaned on the bartop. Besides the fire damage, there was an ugly split in the surface, probably from an axe-blow. “It feels that way,” he said. “But you can’t.”  
  
“I owe it to her.”  
  
“We don’t even know if she’s dead!”  
  
“You think they’d leave survivors? You saw what they painted on the front door. A black shalk. As in: revenge for. We know who did this, and we know why.”  
  
“Yeah.” Julan pushed back off the bar. “And we also know whose fault that was, so if you want someone to punish, punish me.” He stood before Iriel, arms extended. “Go on, fireball me. If you’re gonna become a big scary battlemage all of a sudden, prove it. You hit me with one good fireball to the face, and I’ll let you go fry all the Camonna Tong you like.”  
  
Iriel stared silently into burnt space. Then he flickered, his form beginning to blur. Julan lunged over the bar and caught Ire’s wrist, shaking it until his outline re-stabilised, then pulled him forwards till they were nose to nose. “D'you really think this is what she’d want?”  
  
“She might.” Ire’s voice was a low hiss. “She hated them. They were ruining her life, and I did nothing. Now I have to ruin theirs.”  
  
“She’d want you safe! After everything she went through to find you and bring you home, you’re gonna throw all that back in her face?”  
  
Iriel’s eyes hardened. “As if I didn’t alre–”  
  
“Don’t you dare!” Julan’s nostrils flared, drawing in air for the next part of his tirade, but before he got there, someone else spoke.  
  
“Excuse me, muthseras.” There was a bronze-brown Argonian on the stairs, slender and twitching as an autumn leaf. She glanced nervously behind her, then descended a few more steps, bathed in the glow of her small lantern. “You are… looking for someone?”  
  
“Hul?” Iriel recognised the little street-sweeper, though he’d barely exchanged two words with her before.  
  
She nodded. “You should not stay here. They are watching the building, they will see. And…” Another glance up the stairs, a lowering of her husky voice. “If you need help choosing your path, you should visit the Temple. I hear they keep much wisdom there.”  
  
“The Temple,” said Iriel firmly, “can suck my diseased, corprus-ridden–”  
  
“Please, sera!” Hul’s throat-sac quivered. “Please understand. I cannot get involved in these matters, about which I know nothing.” She fixed him with her green, slitted eyes. “I can only recommend that you turn to the Temple for what you seek.”  
  
Iriel squinted at her. She hissed softly, and dragged a claw down the side of her neck, but tried again. “I am but a pauper, a freedwoman. I know  _nothing_ , saw  _nothing_. I certainly did not see them carry any Nord female out after the Tong were gone, so I cannot have told you any such thing.”  
  
“What?” Julan furrowed his brow, but he’d let go of Iriel, who was already halfway up the stairs.  
  
  
  
The Temple novice, drawn from his bed by the banging, opened the front door of the Infirmary a bare crack. An amber eye appeared in it. “I am going,” Iriel informed him, “to explode your face if you don’t let me in right now.”  
  
“No, he isn’t,” came an unseen voice from behind him. It sounded tired.  
  
“Don’t listen to him; I absolutely am. There will be mess and probably also screaming. Lots and lots, especially yours.”  
  
“No, there won’t.”  
  
The novice blinked, and rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. “Are you… sick?” he croaked.  
  
“Oh yes. I can safely assure you, I am completely and utterly sick.”  
  
“No he… OK, he sort of is, but not in a way you can help with.”  
  
Iriel pulled back from the door. “Do you MIND?” he said. “I am TRYING to NEGOTIATE.”  
  
“By Breath and Blood protect us all!” Another voice, summoning indignation from the depths of sleep. “What is this disturbance, Telis?” The novice was yanked away from the threshold, and Sister Llathyno’s stern visage rose up in his place. “Almsivi in every hour,” she intoned, “but  _visiting_ hours are from the eighth until the tenth bell.”  
  
“When the shitting fuck is that!?”  
  
“IN THE MORNING. NO EXCEPTIONS.”  
  
“But–”  
  
“Engrave upon thy eye, the image of injustice!” The door closed, and no amount of fuss on Ire’s part would reopen it. When a guard patrol entered the street, Julan dragged him away.  
  
  
  
“Mmmmfffthh!!”  
  
“Hold still.” Kneeling on the stone slabs, Julan cupped another handful of river-water and splashed it into Iriel’s face. Then he scrubbed at the ash-stains on it with his sleeve.  
  
“Stop it!! What are youffffth!!– When did you take over as my fucking ma?!”  
  
“You can do me, next, if you want.”  
  
“Why bother at all?! Since when do you care aboutthhh–!”  
  
“Because they’ll never let us into the Eight Plates, otherwise. It’s the safest place still open, and you need food and sleep.” Julan nodded in the direction of the elegantly appointed tavern, up the street. “You can tell it’s classy - they’ve got a doorman.”  
  
By the third handful of water, Ire had gone limp in Julan’s arms, his brief, but escalating surge of adrenaline finally exhausted.  
  
  
  
“You’ve been here before?” Julan’s raised eyebrow was prompted by the slickly-dressed bartender’s ingratiating smile to Iriel, and his “Three blessings, muthsera, a very great pleasure to see you again.”  
  
Ire, teetering on the brink of collapse, slipped from Julan’s shoulder into a polished copperwood chair. “Only once, but I got stuck with the bill. I didn’t know anything about tipping, so I think I left too much.”  
  
“Guess you’ve made a friend for life, then.”  
  
The kitchen was closed, but the bartender scurried away with a vow to see what he could rustle up. Ire leaned his head on his arms, and tried to psyche his body into a state that might tolerate food. Julan occupied himself with his usual survey of anywhere new. Available exits and entrances. The location, nature and damage-dealing potential of all people, makeshift weapons, and types of booze behind the bar.  
  
Presently, the bartender arrived with bowls of luke-warm guar stew, smelling of sour-sweet comberries and bitter roobrush. Sliding the redware dishes onto the table, he fished for (and caught) Iriel’s eye. “Sera,” he murmured. “I wish to offer you my deepest condolences, over the passing of your friend.”  
  
As Iriel stared at him, he continued: “I was so shocked to read his name amongst the others. I never would have imagined such a fine, well-bred gentleman could get mixed up with those ruffians.” With a mournful dip at the waist, he glided away.  
  
Relief, horror and guilt fought a cage-match inside Iriel’s ribs, while Julan gave him a questioning look. Ire shook his head. “Nobody you knew. Hecerinde, his name was.”  
  
“A friend?”  
  
“Oh… not even a friend, just… a…”  
  
“A…  _friend?”_  
  
“No! Although… he did leave me an open offer of oral sex in that bathroom over there. I suppose that’s expired now.”  
  
“Ire!”  
  
“What? Oh… oh gods, I didn’t mean to say it like that, I…” He gasped for air, caught between laughter and tears. “He was supposed to be securingthe South Wall, the… the  _frilly-shirted meathead_. It’s all his fault, not yours.”  
  
Blindsided by an unexpected surge of grief, his face fell slack. “I didn’t want to fuck him, but now, I think… I would have liked to have been friends with him. I know I’m an appalling friend, but I would have liked to try.”  
  
He rubbed his eyes, then stared at the trace of moisture on his fingers, frowning. “It’s… so stupid that  _that’s_  what’s upsetting me, over… everything else. Losing something I never even had.”  
  
“It’s not stupid.” Ire had left a hand on the table, and Julan wrapped his around it. Ire flinched, and he removed them. “Sorry.”  
  
“No! Don’t be, I’m just… all… Touch is… still complicated. More than I’d prefer, but… I can’t simply…” He shrugged, and withdrew his hands to his lap, balling them inside his sleeves. Tel Fyr had offered a wide selection of boil-washed second-hand clothing, on his departure. He had chosen the largest and baggiest.  
  
“I know.” Julan was doing his best reassuring smile. “I get it.” He began poking through his coin-purse. “I already figured we’d want two rooms tonight, let you get some privacy, for once. Money’s getting low again, but I think there’s enough here.” His smile broadened to a grin. “Hey, fancy place like this, maybe they’ll bring you hot water up, and that soap with the herby bits in.”  
  
Iriel’s expression eased slightly. “Do you think so?” He drew in his lower lip. “Perhaps they even do laundry.” His fingers moved reflexively upwards to twist a strand of hair. They kept going until they reached the soft fuzz covering his scalp, then dropped to his lap with embarrassed haste.  
  
Julan was attacking his stew, but noticed. “At least it won’t take long to wash it now,” he ventured, through a mouthful.  
  
To his relief, Ire smiled. “It used to take me all evening. And getting it dry in a wet Cyrodiilic climate took forever. I remember trying to wash my hair the day before my first proper date with Reu. I used up all the water in the building, rinsing it. Then I tried to sit up all night, convinced it’d dry strangely, if I lay on it. I can’t believe I ever had the energy to make myself ill with stress over something so trivial.”  
  
“Can’t you? Is that progress?”  
  
“I don’t know, is it? It doesn’t feel that way.”  
  
Ire rolled a stewed comberry around his spoon, as Julan attempted to resuscitate the conversation. “Did your hair look good, at least? I’ve never had a good hair day in my life, so at least no one I was with ever expected any better.”  
  
“It did. Until I got jam in it at breakfast, and didn’t notice until I was about to go and meet him. That, plus the sleep-deprivation, almost drove me over the edge.” Another smile, this one impish. “The evening wasn’t a  _complete_  disaster, though. Reu said I smelled of strawberries. And got far worse things in my hair, before the night was out.”  
  
Julan had finished his meal in minutes, but Ire hadn’t made much progress. Heavily cooked mixtures of multiple ingredients made him uneasy at the best of times. Something about the yielding, blended softness, individual foodstuffs rendered unidentifiable and suspect. He had switched his spoon for a fork, and was spearing lumps, inspecting them, then carefully scraping them back against the rim of his bowl.  
  
This research project was interrupted by Julan saying, with a slight smirk: “I can see your Varline scar, now.”  
  
“Oh gods.”  
  
“Well. Not  _now_. When you’re, y'know, facing the other way. It’s sort of pretty.”  
He leaned on an elbow, watching Ire. “I’d tell you you’re still pretty, too, but I’m not sure you ever believed me  _before_. And you might think I was after something I’m not.”  
  
“I don’t care if I’m pretty.” Ire’s face had fallen again, his eyes darting towards the door. “I don’t want to be here talking about my hair, eating expensive mush. I want to be with  _her_. I need to know how bad it is.”  
  
“I’m sure things can’t have gone as badly as they looked, down there.” Julan didn’t sound sure, but there was slightly more confidence in his voice, as he added: “They’re all tough, smart thieves.”  
  
Ire stabbed his fork into the bowl and left it there. “I don’t  _care_  about tough or smart, and I don’t care about pretty. I care about kind and loving. Do you know, she… she was the first person I ever met in my life who thought my gayness was a positive thing about me. Aside from Reu, perhaps, but everything he said had an ulterior motive. Tilde had no reason to pretend, she was open as a summer sky, and she thought it was wonderful. Encouraged me! She could be nosy and overly, um… imaginative, but… she’ll never know what her unconditional acceptance meant to me, at the time. What it still means.”  
  
“Yes she will. You can tell her, in the morning.”  
  
“She… might not even be… we don’t…”  
  
“We know she’s alive, so you can tell her in the morning.”  
  
“Yes, but–”  
  
“Shhh.” A scrape of wood on stone, as Julan pushed his chair back. “I’m going to ask that shiny f'lah over there about rooms, don’t move.”  
  
“What’s the point? I’ll never sleep.”  
  
“If you’re going to lie awake, at least you can do it in luxury.”  
  
In the event, neither part of this sentence proved accurate.


	166. practise

Iriel awoke inside a coffin. He knew it was a coffin, because it was completely dark, and when he raised his hands before his face, his fingers brushed wood, inches above. He pushed on it, heartrate increasing. It wouldn’t move. Had they already buried him?  
  
 _They don’t do that here. They don’t bury their dead, they burn them, and put their ashes in urns or those gruesome little sandpits. No coffins. You can’t be in a coffin._  
  
Unless he was back in Summerset. Unless, somehow, they had sent him back home, and his family had–  
  
 _No! Nonononono, that’s impossible, you are dreaming, you are–_

With a sharp cry, he slammed his hands into the slats. They felt very real, and so did the scraped skin that was the sole result of his efforts. Until he heard an answering sound to his left, a heavy, muffled thud.  
  
There wasn’t enough shoulder-room to turn over; he could only move his head. But it was definitely lighter, in that direction, he could see shadows, dim shapes. His eyes began to adjust. He fumbled at a paler form close by, and felt hard, rounded smoothness. Pushed it. Something loose and metal clinked. His fingers delved into… soft… sticky…  
  
 _Stendarr’s fucking mercy, it’s a bowl. It’s the bowl of stew I took up to my room last night, hoping I’d find the appetite for it, but never did. That I…  
  
_ _…I’m under the bed. I’m under the fucking bed. WHY am I under the… oh no. Not again, this is getting ridiculous._  
  
Another thud. He focused through the shadows, past a curtain of trailing blankets. There was a shaft of light on the floor from a lamp down the hall, which was strange, because he knew he’d closed the door.  
  
A foot moved into the shaft of light. It was grey-skinned, but unfamiliar. Even Julan’s toenails weren’t that long and blackened. Moments later, another one joined it. With slow shuffling movements, they turned, until they were pointing towards the bed.  
  
He couldn’t close his eyes. He couldn’t move. He held his breath, heart fluttering in his chest like a trapped moth.  
  
A crashing slam on the bed above forced a squeak from his throat. In the silence afterwards, he lay paralysed, praying his voice had been lost in the sound of the impact.  
  
The feet began moving again. One scraped slowly backwards, folds of rough grey sackcloth piling up against the floor, as the figure dropped to one knee. Two broken-nailed hands came down, braced against the floor as it bent lower.  
  
This time, he remembered what he had to do. He had his instructions, and he followed them.  
  
  
“Ire?”  
  
Through the avalanche of numb swamping him, he heard Julan’s distant voice. Then clattering, thunking sounds from the door, as it struggled against some unseen blockage.  
  
Shouting, shoving. The night porter being summoned, both of them trying the door. Finally, the sound of Julan forcing it far enough to discover the dead ash creature jammed up against the inside, a silver handle protruding from its empty face-hole.  
  
Limp as a rag, Ire lay on the dusty boards as the frantic investigation continued. Eventually, someone checked under the bed. He shook his head, when asked if he was hurt, nodded when asked if he was sure, hoped he was getting it the right way round.  
  
Sensing his reactions were proving insufficient, he searched for reassuring words. “I used a goddamn fork,” he whispered, as the bartender and night porter, pale as coda flowers, dragged the body from the room.  
  
Julan, crouched awkwardly on the floor, let his jaw fall slack for a moment, red eyes flaring wide. “You… really did,” he said.  
  
“Did I… keep safe enough?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah… you did. Good job.”  
  
  
  
Iriel was calmer, but the staff of the Eight Plates were not. The owner, shaken awake by his hysterical bartender, kept apologising and offering Iriel gold in compensation, terrified word of his lax visitor policy might spread. Iriel ignored him, refusing even to be moved into a different room. Or to come out from under the bed, where he had spidered himself against the back wall, claiming he was perfectly fine, and would they please leave him alone, now. Eventually, they obeyed.  
  
Julan remained. “You’re really going to sleep under there?”  
  
“Yes, thank you.”  
  
“Is it… would it be OK if I stayed in the room? Just in case…?”  
  
“It’s fine.” A muffled, breathless laugh. “The bed’s free.”  
  
Julan considered this for a moment. Then, after some graceless manoeuvring (and shifting of the frame), he squeezed himself under the bed.  
  
Iriel’s eyes glinted gold in the dark. “Now who’s being silly?”  
  
“These beds are too soft anyway. Think I’ll get more sleep under here. …Sheogorath, what’s this all over the floor…?”  
  
“Smoked guar casserole with shein-poached comberries and sprained roobrush ampersands.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
Ire had somehow managed to roll most of the way over, and was curled foetal, knees drawn up and arms shielding his head. Through a gap between, he saw Julan fidget and wince, scraping his shoulder as he moved. “Listen, are you sure you’re OK?” he asked Ire. “Do you need anything, or…?”  
  
“I’m OK,” repeated Ire. “Meaning… I’m as OK as I think I can get. That’s why I’m staying under here, to… maximise my level of OK-ness. Please don’t worry, I’ll tell you if it gets low. I know I can’t do much, but… I did safe and I’m doing honest.”  
  
“Good. Then… get some rest.”  
  
Iriel was comfortable enough to attempt sleep, but something niggled at him, and he opened his eyes, peering through the dark. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.  
  
Ire had elected to sleep fully clothed; Julan evidently hadn’t. He gave a grey-shouldered shrug. Reaching up, he seized one of the blankets on the bed, and pulled it underneath, dragging it over himself and flicking one side towards Iriel.  
  
Ire caught hold of it, but only rolled the edge back and forth between his fingers. “Are…  _you_ OK?”  
  
“Of course. Go to sleep.”  
  
“Julan, if I’m not allowed to lie, neither are you.”  
  
A long silence, during which Ire could hear Julan’s teeth shifting gently against each other.  
  
“Fine. No. I’m worried sick about Sottilde. I’m sad about Arathor and Habasi and everyone. Each time I remember the South Wall, all burned up like that, I feel sick, and I have to stop myself imagining it. A Sixth House thing got into your room and nearly killed you, and I don’t know how or why, or anything else I can use to stop it happening again. I’m worried about you, if you’re OK, if I’m doing enough. We’re broke, yet again, why didn’t you take that f'lah’s gold? I might ask him again, tomorrow, if I can–”  
  
He broke off, frustrated. Sighed. “I feel stupidly guilty about the fact Arathor lent me twenty gold and now I can never pay it back, even if I  _did_  have it. And even more guilty that I keep wondering what happened to his bow, because it was really nice, and I miss my bow. And then I think about how I lost it, and what a waste of fucking flesh I am, and–”  
  
Another break, shutting down his voice as it started to veer off-course. Ire waited and he continued, more quietly. “I don’t know what to do next for the prophecies, and I feel bad about wishing Mehra could have helped me, when I should be scared she’s being tortured. Although I’m scared about that, as well. And worried if I say anything, you’ll accuse me of having a crush again. Or guilty for expecting you to care if I do, I can’t decide. And I got wet through in the rain, and now I think I’m coming down with yet another cold.” He was almost laughing. “And I’m still lying in this blighted stew. Which also gave me gas, and… look, this is why you didn’t want to know!”  
  
“I did. Thank you.” Ire gave a small smile. “I can’t do the slightest thing about any of it, but I’m glad you told me.” He arranged the blanket over his hips, then paused again. “Well. I can’t do anything practical, but… perhaps I could attempt an experiment.”  
  
He ferreted around in the dark for Julan’s hand, and cradled it between both of his. After a few moments, he said: “On a scale of one to five, how comforting is this?”  
  
“Uh… it was higher till you made me try to measure it.”  
  
Ire squeezed tighter. “How about now? Better or worse?”  
  
“What am I measuring this against? You said numbers, but what’s a one, or a five worth? D'you want it to go from kick in the teeth to orgasm, or something less–”  
  
“Fuck, you’re right, I didn’t adequately define the parameters of the scale. Let me just–”  
  
“Sheogorath, Ire, leave it. It’s nice, OK? Is that what you want to hear?”  
  
“I’ll take it. Note to self, save complex feedback reports for after the test.”  
  
A yawn. “I can’t wait.”  
  
Abruptly, Ire let go of Julan’s hand. “All right. I’m going to try something else. Last time I did this it backfired on me, but proper methodology means repeating experiments, so…”  
  
“Huh?” Julan stirred in sleepy confusion as Ire squirmed closer, working one arm under Julan’s neck, and wrapping the other around his chest. “D'you mean… that night in my yurt, back home?”  
  
“I do. Behave.”  
  
“Iya, I’m sick, sad, exhausted, and there’s gravy all over my ass. I promise you, I’ve never felt less sexy in my life.”  
  
Ire emitted a snuffling sort of giggle, and pulled him closer. “I always used to find lovers easier than friends,” he sighed, as Julan’s chin settled into the ridge of his collarbone. “If anything goes wrong, you just kiss them or grope them, distract from your problems with sex. I knew how to do that, you see, but with friends, I… Do you know, I actually felt… weirdly betrayed, when you started putting your hands all over me, that night? I was trying to be a good friend, for once, as best I could, and you assumed… I ended up thinking I couldn’t even do  _that_  right, without everything I do being interpreted as sexually aggressive.”  
  
“…Sorry.”  
  
“Ancient history, shhh. Just let me figure it out now, yes? Platonic comfort is difficult, especially right now, when touch is so problematic for me, but–”  
  
Julan’s shoulders tensed beneath his arms. “Listen, don’t do this, if you don’t want to. I’m fine, there’s no need to–”  
  
“I know! But I want to get better at it.” He kneaded Julan’s muscles with his fingers until they began to ease. “Please don’t be hurt, but it’s not entirely about you. I want to practise, for tomorrow. Normal people find physical contact reassuring, and Tilde is normal people. That’s one of the things I like about her. A rational baseline, to measure my chaotic brainscreams against. And she’s so good at comforting people. I know I won’t… know the right things to say to her, to fix anything, so I at least want to… be able to do this right. I’d… do anything for her, but she deserves better than my idea of… what that means.” His voice slowed, and fell to a whisper. “I was being very stupid earlier, thank you for stopping me.”  
  
“…‘course…”  
  
“Please don’t tell Sottilde about that, or… the other stupid things. Not for my sake, for hers. She’s had enough pain, without that kind of honesty. I’ll tell her myself, but not now. Please.”  
  
He felt a nod, amid deep sighing breaths, suspended on the edge of sleep. When he was sure they were regular, Iriel carefully withdrew his limbs. Gently tucking the blanket into their place, he retreated to the secure isolation of his corner by the wall.  
  



	167. family

“Refuse neither brother nor ghost,” Sister Llathyno declaimed, scrawny head sitting atop her robe like a vulture on a concrete chimney, “but only family may visit patients in the acute ward.”  
  
In their battle of wills, Iriel had height on his side, but little else. He was making up what ground he could with swearing and dogged determination. He lifted his chin and squinted down his nose at a small, blue mole at the intersection of her eyebrows. “I. AM. Her. Fucking. Family.”

“Folly secures its power to harm, Altmer. You’re no blood-kin to a human. What do you claim to be to her? Husband?”  
  
“Why the sacred shitballs does that idea produce that face, like you’re sucking piss off bittergreen?”  
  
“The Thrice-Sealed House withstands the Storm!”  
  
“Ire, she’s never gonna let you in, if you–”  
  
“No –let go of me!– I want to hear this! Why shouldn’t I be her husband?”  
  
“Gather no seed in the fields of Hell,” Llathyno advised, with a curl of her lip. “Although I certainly hope  _someone_ is her husband. Considering.”  
  
Iriel narrowed his eyes. “Suppose I am her fucking husband! What then? Would that make me socially acceptable enough to see her, in your reverend fucking opinion?”  
  
“We can have no opinions about Truth.” She locked eyes with him briefly. Then: “Faith conquers all,” she sighed. “Let us yield to Faith.” Starched burlap scraping on the floor like a millstone, she rotated slowly out of the doorway. “Forbidden to some,” she quoted blandly, “but not to you.”  
  
‘Some’ evidently still included Julan, who almost had the door slammed on his boot. When Iriel rounded on the priestess, she raised her brows in sarcastic challenge. “Oh, how rarely wisdom rules our hearts. Will you claim him Nord-kin, too? Your firstborn, perhaps?”  
  
Julan grinned at her around the door. “I’m adopted,” he said.  
  
“No child has a sinner’s heart,” Llathyno conceded. Before adding, with a triumphant smirk: “Nevertheless, no minors on the ward.”  
  
An aging Dunmeri voice squawked outrage from another room. “Whaaat?!”  
  
“Peace, Galvis, not you!”  
  
“Go on.” Julan pushed Iriel towards the door on the far wall. “I’ll see her next time, you go on in. Tell her one of those hugs you practised is from me.”  
  
  
  
Like everyone else in the acute ward, she appeared to be sleeping. In the third bed from the door, between two grey almost-corpses, sucking and blowing laboured breaths through their slack, gaping mouths. Sottilde was a blooming fruit-tree of life in comparison to her desiccated neighbours, though to Ire, she still looked pale, her rosy cheeks reduced to mere hints of pink, her chestnut hair dulled to brown. To his relief, he saw no burns. He hesitated, wondering how to wake her, if he  _should_  wake her - but of course he had to wake her, he couldn’t come all this way, and–  
  
The corner of her mouth twitched. Then she launched herself upright in bed, eyes wide, swivelling to focus on him. For slow-hanging seconds, recognition failed, and he heard air rasping through her throat, faster and faster, her clenched knuckles white as the sheet. He forced a smile, and she saw him. Her noisy breathing continued to accelerate, increasing in pitch until she was squeaking and scraping like an amateur rat string section. She held out her arms.  
  
“Are you capable of actual speech yet?” he asked, presently.

“Yeah,” she croaked, “no worries. It doesn’t hurt any more, I just sound like I swallowed an alit.” A cheesegrater laugh. “Feel like it, too.”  
  
“I’m glad it doesn’t hurt, but I actually only meant to ask whether you’d finished trying to puncture my eardrums.”  
  
“Oh! Yeah, sure. I’ll prob'ly start crying in a minute, though, just to warn ya. I cry at everything these days, it’s a goddamn joke.”   
  
She leaned back on her elbows and looked at him with weary, delighted astonishment. He endured her scrutiny. Tried not to wince, when she reached out and stroked his velvety scalp in the wrong direction. “Kyne,” she breathed. “So how… y'know…  _are_  you?”  
  
He shook his head, trying to dismiss the question, but her earnest affection needled him into attempting a real answer. Only to find himself utterly nonplussed. “I have no idea.” He shrugged helplessly. “I keep waking up in the morning, and that’s… it’s a thing.” He tried another smile. “Happy to see you?” A pause for verification, then the smile solidified, briefly. “Yes, yes, definitely that. But… Gods, Tilde, what the fuck did they do to you?”  
  
“I guess I gotta talk about it, don’t I?” Ire felt guilty for sabotaging her smile. “They came just after we’d closed. I was down in the kitchen, doing the mugs, but most of the others were upstairs. Arathor and Chirranirr fought them in the hallway, and Habasi threw knives from up on the tapestry rail. They took a couple down, but there were loads. Hecerinde was… shit, I dunno what that scuttlehead thought he was doing, but they found him on the stairs, with a barrel o’ lamp oil an’ a sack o’ potatoes. For all I know, he set  _himself_  on fire. Bacola and Phane were on the top floor, and held 'em off with a wardrobe for a while, till the Tong poured the lamp oil on it. I heard Stands trying to heal people, for a while.” A painful-looking coughing fit gripped her, and he waited until she could continue. “I knew what was happening, known it was coming for weeks, but I still… figured we’d pull something outta the bag, y'know?”  
  
“There’s… really only you left?”  
  
“That’s what it looks like, but I dunno. They never found Habasi’s body. I’d say the Tong took it for some sick trophy, except… I heard Tsiya got sprung outta jail, that same night. So I can hope, right?”  
  
Ire suppressed his opinion as to whether being on the run with Tsiya was a better or worse fate than death. “How in Oblivion did you escape?”  
  
“Not in Oblivion, I’ll tell you, though it felt like that, for bits of it.” She paused to cough, again. “I hid in the chimney. That’s how I fucked my lungs up so bad. I’d only just put the fire out, and there was still a lotta smoke, and then more stuff started burning. They only just got me out in time, they said, and then all my entire fuckin’ respiratory paraphernalia got infected. Lost a lotta time to that. I’m still not amazing, but they said I can stay till I’m well enough to sneak outta town. Y'know, without the Tong hearing me wheezin’ like Sanguine’s bedsprings from the other side of the river.”  
  
“Where will you go? Sadrith Mora? We’d love to have you, but things are tight for space. You might be more comfortable in Ald'ruhn or Vivec.”  
  
Her face stilled. “You didn’t hear about  _anything?!_  Babe… it wasn’t just here. They planned this like the fuckin’ Webspinner, they hit us everywhere at once, hard as they could. The whole of the Vivec and Ald'ruhn guilds are gone, if not dead, then into deep hiding. Drarel was the only one to make it out of Vivec, he dropped in on me before he left for the coast, and told me what he knew. They got us, babe. It’s over.”  
  
“And… Sadrith Mora?”  
“Why’re you asking me? You were there, so–”  
“No!”  
“What?”  
  
“I haven’t been home since the day I last saw you, we went straight to–”  
  
“Shit!” Her lungs were rasping again. “I thought when I saw you it meant Drarel was right, that they hadn’t–”  
  
“Never mind this fucking Drarel, just tell me: did they hit Muriel’s or not?!”  
  
“I don’t know! Nobody’s heard, and the messages I tried to send aren’t getting through! Drarel overheard something in Vivec, like maybe their plan got screwed up, delayed somehow. But I don’t know, and I’ve run outta sources! You gotta get over there and see if they got the tip-off in time to get out!”  
  
“Tilde, you have to come with us. Or hide somewhere safer, the Temple can’t protect you forever.”  
  
She grimaced, and her eyes slipped away from his face. “I know, but it’s… I got some other stuff to finish up, here. See a man about a scrib, that kinda thing. Nothing to worry about, just gonna stay in Balmora a bit longer. You get moving, I can take care of myself.”  
  
Ire nodded. “All right.” She was blinking rapidly, staring at the end of the bed. He took a step back, then hesitated, fingertips pressed together. “Um… Tilde…?”  
  
  
  
Two hours later, he and Julan sat slumped in a dishevelled heap in the Balmora Mages’ Guild teleportation chamber. Every so often, Julan would spring to his feet and chase down a random mage to ask if Masalinie, the guild-guide, was back, yet. The mages only tutted, and told him he’d know when she returned, because she’d teleport into the room he was sitting in. But he kept asking them anyway, being too full of nervous tension to sit still. He had sharpened his sword far past the point of practicality, as well the Daedric dagger he’d lent Iriel. He was still turning the whetstone over in his fingers, eyeing things that might have the wrong number of edges. His nails were smoothed to the quick.  
  
Iriel was too tired to do anything but sit, and even that felt oddly gruelling, as if the mere act of maintaining contact with the floor beneath him expended effort. He was near-horizontal, head resting on their bag. Julan’s bag, technically, but shared between them ever since Iriel’s had sunk into waters too dreugh-infested to dive in. There’d been nothing in it he missed, anyway. His blue scarf had been rolled in his pocket. It was a little fragile to wear, at this point, but he still found it comforting to touch. He was holding it now, counting the remaining sequins, over and over, humming softly. He felt the bag shift as Julan stood up and made for the corridor again.  
  
Julan’s state of mind was far more appropriate to the situation than his own, he knew. He ought to be worrying himself sick about the Sadrith Mora guild, but instead, he felt pulled between too many possibilities to settle on one emotion, rendering him at an odd, precarious sort of peace. His relief at seeing Sottilde still swaddled him from the potential horrors of the future. At this precise, precious moment, nobody needed him to do, or be anything. All he could do was wait, so he waited.  
  
Julan swept back in and collapsed with a clatter of Orcish metal greaves. He’d put all his armour on as soon as Iriel had told him the news. “Still no sign of her,” he huffed. “Why in blighted Oblivion don’t they have someone else here to do transport, when she’s out?! Mages are  _useless_.” He remained still for all of three seconds, before he braced a leg as if to stand. “You hungry? D'you want me to go and find some–”  
  
“No.” Ire flapped a hand at his tensed knee, pushing it flat. “I want you to sit the fuck down.”  
  
“You’re too calm. Are you sure you’re OK?”  
  
“I’m fine. I’m thinking.” He leaned back and peered at Julan, upside down. “I know that doesn’t sound impressive, but considering how hard it’s been for me lately, I’m trying to appreciate the ability while it lasts.”  
  
“What’re you thinking about, then?”  
  
“Oh… just… people. Sottilde, at first, but now it’s people you don’t know, so I won’t bore you with it.”  
  
“People I don’t know includes nearly everyone, Iya, so talk if you want.” A sigh. “I could use the distraction.”  
  
“If it’ll stop you jumping up and down all the time.”  
  
Iriel gazed at the ceiling, as he folded his scarf into ever-smaller squares. “I was thinking how strange it is that out of everyone I ever lost, if you’d asked me, beforehand, who I’d miss most, I would have said my parents, or whichever of my shitty boyfriends I was with at the time, but… now? I don’t care. There’s nothing in those relationships I need any more. The only one I still miss, as a  _person_ , in any kind of real way… is Firionwe. My friend, my fiancée.”  
  
“Well. She wasn’t really your fiancée, was she?”  
  
“What’s  _that_  supposed to mean?”  
  
“Oh come on, stop fixating on that nix-faced priestess. I’m not implying anything bad, I just mean you didn’t actually want to marry her, so–”  
  
“What?” Iriel turned over, so he could frown at Julan from the correct angle. “Of course I wanted to marry her! She was my best friend, and I loved her. You… you didn’t think they were forcing us, did you?”  
  
Julan was bewildered by the strength of Ire’s reaction. “But I didn’t think you… y'know. Wanted girls that way.”  
  
“I don’t, but I still would have done everything I could to make her happy.”  
  
“What about, y'know, having a family? Were you still gonna try and–”  
  
“Ah!” Iriel smirked. “That was our naughty little secret, me and Firi. Both of us despised the idea of having children, but we didn’t tell anyone else that. They’d have been livid if they knew we intended to let them go to all this effort to obtain a caste-exemption for our marriage, only to sabotage our own bloodlines. Such rebellious little sneaks, we were. But we had a plan. Our family was going to be the two of us, lots and lots of pretty birds, and a huge library of books.”  
  
“So she was fine with never… I mean… She didn’t… suspect anything?”  
  
Ire gave him an odd look. “You have to remember that we were  _children_ , for most of our engagement. As far as we knew, marriage only meant being best friends forever, and there are far worse things to base a marriage on. Just ask my parents, with their rebellious cross-caste 'true love’ that barely lasted a decade before they could hardly stand to look at each other!”  
  
He rolled his eyes, but then contrition began creeping into them, and he buried his chin in the bag, arms wrapped around like a wall. “I suppose… as we got older, it did become increasingly apparent she might want things I was poorly qualified to give her. I told you we read a lot of steamy romance novels? She started getting ideas. I did try! I got quite good at the kissing part, it was… odd, but… fine. I assumed that was how it was meant to feel.  
  
“Anything further… well. I developed a wide range of excuses. One of which was that her father had sternly informed me that we were not to get up to anything under his roof. That… might have contributed to my fear of leaving the house, actually. I’d start sweating any time she wanted to go to the beach, or even into the garden. I’d read the same novels she had, and I knew what went on in hidden gazebos under the tayflower, behind the silkvine trellises.”  
  
“Never have sex on a beach,” muttered Julan. “I don’t care what the novels say.”  
  
Ire seized the chance to switch the target of the conversation. “You and Shani were engaged, weren’t you?”  
  
A derisive huff of breath. “Not really. Not properly.”  
  
“Improperly, then?”  
  
“Gah, we…” Julan exhaled again “…it was a game, almost. Nothing that felt real. I asked her one night, out in the Grazelands. There’d been a wedding at the camp. Odaishan and Lanabi, I think, not that it matters. I wasn’t there, of course, but I heard the singing and music, and afterwards Shani brought me some of the leftover food. It was late, and she was tired and giggly from dancing. I was in a strange mood, kind of… sad, but not in a self-pitying way or an angry way, more of a… I don’t know. I’d been watching the sunset, and listening to the voices, and it made me wish I was any good at music, or poetry, or… gah, I dunno.” A shrug, an embarrassed grin. “I was nineteen. It feels a million years ago, now.  
  
"I wanted to make love to her, but she only wanted to fuck, and as usual, we met somewhere in the middle. I think she yelled at me for 'doing creepy things’. You know, like looking into her eyes. Anyway. Then we ate the scribcakes and shalk, and I asked her if she wanted to get married. Not as a real proposal. I didn’t have the right gifts, or know the proper words or have the right permissions or anything. I knew I couldn’t get any of that stuff, and I knew we couldn’t marry. I just wanted to know what she thought.  
  
“She laughed. And reminded me that I was an outcast, like I’d forgotten, but even if I wasn’t, she said, what would be the point? We wouldn’t get anything new out of it, and she could get food and dancing perfectly well at other people’s weddings. She said it’d only be worthwhile if we were somewhere else, like the city. She said her uncle could get me a job in Ald'ruhn, and we should go there, and get married so we could get a house. And I didn’t understand the appeal of any of it.” He leaned back against the wall, letting himself slide downwards, until his arm rested next to Ire’s, on the bag.  
  
“See, I thought she was wrong.” His voice was sharper, suddenly more concrete. “I thought that it was only if we married there, that we’d get something new from it. Because… you make promises in front of the tribe, don’t you? And that makes what you have together into something else, something binding you, and binding you to the tribe as well, giving you a role. You get marked, too, in the ceremony the next day, so it’s always part of you. Lanabi… her husband died, and she’s with someone else now, but she still has her marks for Odaishan. I like that.”

Iriel nodded, comprehending Julan’s sentiment, if not sharing it. _I wonder if I’ll ever learn to want the things out of life that normal people want?_  At that moment, he felt quite neutral about either possibility. He thought of Sottilde, earlier, and her expression of petrified guilt, when he’d said:  
  
_“…So, you’re not planning on telling me?”  
__  
“What?”  
__  
“That you’re pregnant. True, you might say it’s none of my business, and you’d be right! It does makes me wonder, though… are you trying to spare me more worry? Or is it that you’re afraid I’ll be angry with you?”  
  
__“Why… would you be angry?”  
__  
“I don’t know, why would I?”  
__  
“Ire, you’ve really and totally utterly lost me, now.”  
  
__“Listen, it’s… if… listen, I want you to know that I love you, and whatever… even if… I mean, you’re both free adults, and I… I… these things happen, and neither of you owed me any kind of… so I… I’m not angry, and–”  
__  
“What the goddamn heck are you–?”  
  
__“All I want to say is that you have no compulsion to tell me anything, but you ought to at least tell him. His pa never wanted anything to do with him, and he says he doesn’t care, but… if he knew he’d done that to some kid, he’d… and if he found out I knew, and didn’t tell him–”  
  
__“Are you seriously thinking what I think you thinking??? How fuckin’ long d'you think humans are pregnant for?!”  
__  
“I– I thought… perhaps in Gnisis, when you–”  
__  
“Fuck off!!!!”  
__  
“So…”  
__  
“No!!! I was drunk, not… Shor’s balls, Ire! Bend down, I wanna hit you onna head!”  
  
“With pleasu–OW!!”  
  
“Me an’ him was one time last year, and even when I’m drunk, I’m still careful! That’s how I know it’s gotta be Rals. That shitbag’s the only one who makes me get stupid like that. And he’s prob'ly not coming back, and even if he did, I already know what he’ll say, but… I’m gonna stay in town a bit longer, just in case.”  
  
“But… for how long? And then what? Haven’t you asked the healers if they can do something?”  
  
“Well… see… that’s the other thing.”  
  
“You’re not. You can’t be serious.”  
  
“I don’t know! But… I’m gonna be thirty next year, and… Shor’s balls, Ire, after the year I’ve had, I reckon it might be time to do something different from all this Guild stuff. Maybe I just wanna lay low, have a normal life, and maybe… maybe… I always wanted kids, but I never had the right guy, or the right time, and maybe that’s not going to happen. Maybe I… shit, I dunno.”  
  
“…Auri-fucking-El, Tilde.”  
  
“Yeah. I know.”  
  
“So… you’re just… going to… what?”  
  
“I… goddammit, Ire, I dunno. I’ll see if Rals crawls back out of his hole, and in the meantime, I’m gonna think about it some more. I’ve got some time yet, before I start to… Kyne, I bet no one notices I’m even duffed up, they all think I’m monstrously fat anyway.”  
  
“Up the duff. Duffed up is something else. But… could you really handle it?”  
  
“Listen, if my mam could hold a family of four screamin’ kids together on her own after my dad got himself stuck inside six wolves at once, I can hold me an’ one li’l elfbug together on my own. Right?”  
  
"Yes, but… is having a child out of wedlock as socially suicidal here as it would be in Summerset?”  
  
“I dunno. Guess I’ll find out. Nothing I can’t handle. Prob'ly. But If I gotta end up going somewhere else, then… I gotta.”  
  
“Look… are you sure about this? Keeping it, I mean. Sure, sure?”  
  
“Fuck, no. Not at all. But at the same time… I sorta am? I know it makes no sense, but…”  
  
“Ohhh Til-dove, don’t cry. Wait, I mean… cry. Cry, it’s fine. It’ll be all right, I’ll… something. We’ll… something. Come here. Oh gods.”_  
  
He’d rocked her gently back and forth, as her tears soaked into his shirt. Her pain had seeped into him too, deep and shapeless as the sea, and he’d let it, freely and wholeheartedly. Even so, it had been a while before he’d noticed that he was crying, too.  
  
  
He lay face-down on the bag, utterly drained. Drifting into deeper currents of thought, until Julan said, “D'you ever wish your life had gone that way? That you’d married Firi?”  
  
“I don’t know. No, I don’t think I do. If nothing else, I hope she’s happier now, than I could have made her.” He tightened his arms around his head. “I wish I hadn’t hurt her.”  
  
Julan was quiet for a while, until: “Have you ever had times you thought you were doing the right thing and later you realise you were using that to justify being an asshole?”  
  
Ire snorted. “No. I’ve been an asshole, but I never thought I was doing the right thing. I never had that excuse. Is this about Shani?”  
  
“I just… wish there was a way to know whether someone you’d hurt would feel better, if you apologised, or if you’d only be reminding them of it, or if they’d be offended that you even asked, because you’re daring to suggest they might still care.”  
  
“I’ll notify the Psijiics; someone should definitely get working on that.” Ire yawned, though it was barely noon. “If it helps… I was grateful for your apology, but at the time, I wanted you to think I wasn’t, because I felt stronger that way.”  
  
“So even if you do apologise, you might never know if it was the right thing to do? Sheogorath, sometimes I think I should have stayed in that cave in the mountains. You and Mother have the right idea, people are too much trouble.”  
  
“I think she misses you,” Ire mumbled drowsily.  
  
“Who? Mother?”  
  
“Shani.”  
  
“Pfft.”  
  
“No, really, she made me promise all these things. That I’d take care of you. I broke that one, of course. And I can’t even remember the other thing.”  
  
“She… what, really?!”  
  
“Oh!” Ire sat up, frowning. “That I wouldn’t tell you. That was the other one. Whoops.”  
  
“You broke both, then.”  
  
Ire rubbed at his forehead. “At least I’m consistent in my shit-for-brains awfulness.”  
  
“You can’t help it if your memory’s bad. Although…” Julan spoke tentatively, as if he might jinx it, “…you seem better today, than you have been. You’re swearing again. I missed that. And crying again.”  
  
On cue, Iriel looked on the verge of tears, but then the pendulum swung the other way, and he let out a giggling, gasping breath. “How did my baseline for normality shift so far,” he groaned, “that now constant crying and swearing is a sign of a  _good_  day?”  
  
“You’re laughing again, too.”  
  
“I’m much more… present, today. Sometimes I’m not. Sometimes, it’s like… something else is holding up my skin for me.”  
  
“Is that why you don’t want to be touched?”  
  
“Yes! Now you’re laughing at me, but yes! It’s as if… on those days, being touched is like… someone banging on the door, when you’re down in the basement. Perhaps not unwelcome, in theory, but in practice, by the time you can manage to respond, they’ve probably already gone. Sometimes more staircases keep materialising! And… and sometimes they keep  _knocking_ , and you feel  _guilty_ , and  _panic_ , and fall down the stairs, and…”  
  
Julan shook his head, smiling. “OK, OK, I get it.”  
  
“I just… wish I could promise I’ll still be like this when I wake up tomorrow, and not in the basement, but… hhh… oh  _fuck_.” Now the tears came in earnest, and Iriel pressed a hand to his nose. “See, I’m at it again. I blame Tilde.” He began rummaging in the shared bag with his free hand. “Do we have any such thing as a handkerchief?”  
  
“Uh… there’s a towel.”  
  
“We have a towel?!”  
  
“Yeah, I swiped it from the Eight Plates.”  
  
Ire gave him a snot-covered stare. “That’s not like you.” Julan’s membership of the Guild had always been more from convenience than commitment.  
  
“Maybe not, I just… didn’t want people saying there were no thieves in Balmora any more.”  
  
“You… you  _trashbag_. Don’t make me cry any harder, or I’ll die of dehydration.”  
  
Iriel grabbed something from the bottom of the bag. “Please avert your eyes, I’m going to do something inexcusable. It may, or may not, involve blowing my nose on a dirty sock.”  
  
“As long as it’s one of yours.”  
  
“I have taken a decision,” Ire said indistinctly, “not to comment on this matter at this time.”  
  
Julan snorted. “I guess I’ve seen you do worse.”  
  
“Gods…” Iriel’s eyes shone wide with horror, above his makeshift handkerchief, “You really have, haven’t you?”  
  
“Same goes for me, when I was ill in Gnisis.”  
  
Ire let his shoulders sag into a mock-tragic pose. “Sometimes I think the only way to handle the complete destruction of any mutual respect or dignity between us is either to split up and swear to never be on the same continent again for the rest of our lives, or to get married.”  
  
The moment he’d thrown out this glib remark, panic seized him, but Julan’s explosion of laughter was reassuringly immediate. “I’m pretty sure,” he told Iriel, “we can find more options in between than that.”


	168. siren

Mid-afternoon in the Sadrith Mora Thieves Guild, and the siren was going off again. Automatic, Iriel rolled off his bed, book tumbling to the floor. A swift drop through the trapdoor, and he was down the ladder and into the bar. The summer sun gained entry only in narrow, knifing shafts, slanting between the makeshift planks hastily sawn from the tables and chairs and nailed over the windows. Shards of glass glinted amid the sawdust.  
  
Muriel was there, grim-faced, pulling bottles from a cupboard and lining them up along the bar. He edged past, wary of their volatile contents. He’d helped her prepare them last night, showing her how to adjust the flame beneath the alembic, and measure out the different salts. He had little brain for alchemy these days, but between them, they could follow a recipe, and she’d proved very adept. Especially once he’d assured her that the poisonous acid they’d chosen would only affect Camonna Tong flesh, and not her hardwood flooring. She was heartsick enough over the furniture, shedding bitter tears as the axe plunged into her oakwood dining table.

“Iriel!” He turned to see her preparing to crouch behind the bar, securing a mask around her mouth and nose. “Helende’s guarding Erer’s room, last line o’ defence to keep the shields up. Our job’s to pick off any that make it through, not play hero. You stay back here wi’ me, lad. You’ll be no use to man nor mer down there.” She clicked her tongue at him. “Specially not still in them pyjamas, you lazy sload.”  
  
He didn’t have time to debate the likelihood of sload wearing pink kreshlinen pyjamas. “I’ll come back up if they make it through the door,” he called, skidding around the banister-rail and onto the stairs.  
  
Seven thieves left now, after the Camonna Tong’s first, botched, attempt at total extermination. When their ringleader had, realising only half the guild was home, decided at the last minute to delay the assault. Too late to stop a trio of daggerlads, who’d stormed into the cornerclub without any backup. Celegorn and Erer had made mincemeat of them, but not before Rissinia took a blade to the gut in the chaos.  
  
In Helende’s absence, Muriel had taken command, knowing a full assault would resume as soon as the Tong realised their mistake. Fandus, the only one with a safe Mark, had teleported with Rissinia to his sister’s in Caldera, in the hope of saving his life. They had strict instructions not to attempt to return until they received the safe-signal. When Helende ‘ported in with the fate of the other guildhalls, it was clear that signal wouldn’t be sent in a hurry.  
  
Iriel and Julan had arrived to a siege. Invisibility had got them through the cordon of Camonna Tong sentries, but almost got them killed by the magical traps Erer Darothril had set up around the cornerclub. Fortunately, the ones to counter illusion spells activated before the explosions of frost and shock, and they’d been dragged inside at the last minute, Helende beyond caring about Julan’s past sins, as long as he could hold a sword.  
  
Seven left: Helende, Erer, Muriel, Celegorn, Bodu, Julan and Iriel, all living on top of each other in fractious, claustrophobic tension, constantly on the alert for a fresh attack. Arguing constantly over how many Tong were still out there, how many they’d killed, versus how many reinforcements might be sent. How much longer they could make a stand, and, if they should flee, how it might be managed.  
  
Iriel’s return meant Helende and Bodu gained support for their theory that, combined with Erer, they might have enough magic to conceal an escape. They were opposed by Muriel and Celegorn, who held, loudly, in Cel’s case, that they were not going anywhere unless their home was conquered outright, and until they’d taken every possible Camonna Tong down with them. Iriel tried not to get involved, as these arguments circulated endlessly. He might have sided with the escape plan, if not for the fact that no one could agree on where to go.  
  
Seven left– oh, and a guar. Let’s not forget about Pasha, the guar. Since it was no longer safe to allow her outside, it was hard for anyone else to forget about her, either. Currently she was locked in the basement, but Iriel could hear her keening even over the sound of the siren, as he hurtled down the stairs and into the front room.  
  
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” he yelled at the siren. From the top of the bookcase, Celegorn made a vulgar gesture, and continued emitting his wide-mouthed, ululating shriek. Ire threw a cushion at him. “We’ve all heard you! We get it! You can stop!”  
  
Bodu cackled from the sofa, and threw a cushion at Iriel in friendly rejoinder. “D'you think,” Julan told him sternly, “we could focus on the threat?” Despite his words, he was still slouched beside Bodu on the sofa, and his sword was sheathed on the floor. Bodu laughed louder, and made a cross-eyed, gurning face at him.  
  
If their behaviour seems recklessly nonchalant, then please understand that they suffered these alerts several times a day, most proving false alarms. Especially when Celegorn was the one on watch. He had the sharpest eyes, but the twitchiest reflexes, and he enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Nevertheless, he had finally decided to stop screeching. “Shut up!” he hissed, instead. “This is a real one, a live one!”  
  
He squinted between the window boards, hands curling and uncurling. “One, in the road!” He began spitting out descriptors like melon-seeds (not that I would dare suggest that Cel would eat a melon). “Dunmer, female. Armour, netch. Dagger, chitin. In hand, knows how to hold it. Shortbow, strung, but on back. Quiver… twelve arrows. No magic on her I can see.”  
  
Julan had shifted to the edge of the couch and retrieved his sword. “Only one?”  
  
“One, I said, one. If more, I say more, now: one.” Cel grimaced, weaving his head from side to side. “Still in the road.”  
  
“You think she’s Tong?”  
  
“Not Tong from before. New one.” Cel’s voice grated with disgust as he added, “ _Pretty_.”  
  
Bodu dropped the lock he was mending into his lap. “Lemme see! Someone help me over, I wanna see!”  
  
Celegorn ignored him, eyes glued to the spy-crack. “She looks at door. Puts dagger away. Gets bow, arrow. Looks at window. Doesn’t see me, can’t see me, but I see her, see her eyes. Tong or not Tong, she’s here for making corpses. Calling it, I’m calling the word!”  
  
Bodu was bouncing up and down. “Lemme see!!!”  
  
Darothril had primed the magical traps so that anyone could trigger them with the right keyword. This was Celegorn’s favourite part of the game, even better than doing the siren. Did I mention he had been cut off from the brain-dampening effects of his moon sugar for upwards of three weeks?  
  
He squatted on the bookcase, gripping with bare toes and vibrating with anticipation. “Not close enough. Need her past the wall, or the trap won’t reach. She nocks arrow, sneaks up path. Closer, girl. Can’t get you in the eye with an icicle till you’re closer.” He licked his lips. “Want to say the word for you, darling, but you need to be closssserrrr. That’s right. Up the path.”  
  
“Maybe she’s some kind of Tong special assassin,” offered Julan. “Maybe that’s why she’s alone.”  
  
Ire pursed his lips. “Wouldn’t she be using invisibility spells? I didn’t hear the anti-illusion glyphs trigger.”  
  
“Let us see, Cel!”  
  
Bodu’s tone was impressively beseeching, but Cel was having none of it. “No!! I have to be ready to say the word!” Barricaded with half the wood in the house, the front window was impenetrable, and he was the only one with any view out at all. “She comes closer. Aims bow at door, ready to draw. Yeah, you can try that, sweetness, but three more steps and you’re past my  _freezing_  point.” His lips slid back from his pointed teeth. “Three more steps, and those cruel little eyes and those swishy little braids of yours will make a beautiful ice-sculpture–”  
  
“Hey, Cel.” Julan was frowning. “Just… lemme see out there for a minute, will you?”  
  
“Shhhh, almost there! One more step, that’s right. Nonono, no stopping! Come closer. Oooh, she’s got murder on her mind, this one. I can tell. Almost time for the word, oh yes!”  
  
A shrill, rage-filled voice filtered through the blockade. “…ere’s my  _guar_ … ou filthy vassith scu…”  
  
Iriel suddenly forgot how to move or produce sound, but Bodu launched himself off the couch at the same time as Julan, both of them shouting at Celegorn. Julan had the advantage of working legs, but Bodu started out closer, which only meant that he collided with Julan on his way past, and clung to his waist, sliding down and being dragged across the floor as Julan fought his way towards Cel’s bookcase.  
  
“BRO, STOP!!!”  
“CEL DON’T SAY IT!!”  
“SHE’S OVER THE LINE, I’M SAYING THE WORD!!!”  
“NO!!!”  
“I’M SAYING IT!!!”  
“BODU GET THE FUCK OFF MY LEGS I CAN’T–”  
  
Bodu was trying to climb Julan, to get closer to Cel. Julan, clinging to the shelves for support, kicked at Bodu viciously with his free foot. The shelves shook, and Cel lost his balance, magical trigger-word tearing into a screech as he leapt onto Julan’s head.  
  
“TREACHERY!!!” Cel was screaming now, “DARK ELF TREACHERY WITHIN THE WALLS!!!”  
  
“CEL, YOU N'WAH, I’M– AAAAAAGH!! HE BIT ME!!! THAT BASTARD–”  
  
In the flailing struggle to stay upright, Julan kicked Bodu again, this time hard enough to send him rolling across the room, ending up beside the front door. As his friends clawed blindly at each other, Bodu reached up, unfastened the locks with a deft hand, then shuffled back a little.  
  
A few seconds later, the front door slammed open, whizzing past Bodu’s nose and into the wall. “Steal my BOYFRIEND?” came the indignant howl, “You can KEEP him, by Azura, but STEAL MY GUAR???”   
  
Reclining across the threshold, one elbow propped suavely beneath his head, Bodu grinned up the length of Shani’s arrow-shaft into her blazing eye. “Welcome, my dear lady,” he said, “to our humble abode.”  
  
  
“What do you MEAN I’m trapped?” Shani tossed her head and glared around the room. “I’m not staying here with all you weird n'wah freaks, it took long enough to track you down! I’m taking my guar, and I’m going home! You’re lucky,” here, she shook a finger at Iriel, who was keeping the banisters between them, “that I’ve decided not to kill him! And only for Bodu’s sake, not his.”  
  
She simpered at the Orc beside her on the sofa. He returned her a grin of infinite smugness, and Julan rolled his eyes. He was with Iriel on the stairs, holding a cloth to his bleeding ear. Helende had carted Celegorn into the basement, to simmer down.  
  
“I’m real sorry to break it to you,” Bodu said, “but now we let you in, all the Tong watching are gonna know you’re a friend. You go out there, they’ll try an’ kill you.”  
  
“If she teleports  _right now_ ,” Julan said crisply, “they won’t have sent word to their squads at the Intervention points yet. Anyone got a scroll she can use?”  
  
“Oh, you want to get rid of me, do you?” Shani whipped around. “I bet. Can’t have me telling all your new friends what a rat-faced bastard you are, can you?”  
  
At this, Julan burst out laughing. “They know, trust me.” He stood up. “There, I tried. Can’t say I didn’t try. I’m gonna see if Helende needs help with Celegorn. That sounds like pleasant company, right now.” He jerked a thumb towards the window. “One of you s'wits get back on watch.”  
  
Shani watched him go, incredulous. “When did he turn into such an arrogant nix-khett? Hey–” she addressed Iriel, who had moved to monitor the spy-crack, “Hey, you don’t need to do what he tells you, you know. I never did anything he told me!” Ire pretended he hadn’t heard.  
  
He was still at the window, trying to block out Shani and Bodu’s inane chatter when Celegorn returned from the basement, sullen and dripping wet. “My watch! Mine!” he barked, and Ire conceded his spot gracefully.  
  
“You’re all mad,” Shani observed, lolling over the arm of the couch. “How long are you going to keep this up for? Can’t you just kill them? How many can there be?”  
  
“LOTS,” snapped Cel. “Lots and lots and lots, because Whore-vus Dren wants thieves dead, so Dren sends fighters. No end to fighters, because Dren gets more fighters with slave money. No end to slave money, because no end to slaves. No end to slaves, because Dren has dirt on councillors, makes House Hlaalu vote how he wants. Can’t get Dren out of Hlaalu because Duke is brother, brother protects Dren, protects Camonna Tong.” Flecks of foam were collecting at the corners of his mouth.  
  
“Easy now, bro,” soothed Bodu. “We don’t hafta think about that no more, we just gotta focus on getting out of here.”  
  
“So go kill this Dren f'lah,” Shani yawned. “Ohhh, I nearly forgot. Running off on your own because you think you can kill the big bad devil on top of the mountain is a  _Julan_  solution, and we need a  _real_  one. Sorryyyyy, never mind.” She got up, and headed for the doorway with the faint “whrrroooooooo” sounds floating through it. “I’m going to find Pasha. Maybe she’ll have a good idea.”  
  
Cel stared at the empty road, hunched on the bookcase like a gargoyle. “Can’t kill Dren,” he muttered. “Can’t ever kill Dren. Too many walls, too many guards, too many unpickable locks. Can’t. Want to. Want to till it hurts. Can’t.” He was digging every nail on his body into the bookcase, scraping indents in the wood.  
  
“Hey,” said Bodu. “No more o’ this, yeah? Tell me what you see outside, instead.”  
  
Iriel had been hovering near the stairs during this exchange. For the last few minutes, he had been tapping the tips of his fingers together, and frowning at the back of Celegorn’s head. “Cel,” he said finally, “you were a slave in the Dren Plantation, weren’t you?” Cel’s head swivelled immediately to face him, black eyes wide.  
  
“Pal,” Bodu hissed at Ire, “don’t set him going this way, yeah? It’ll end bad, trust me.”  
  
“You know the layout of the Dren plantation,” Iriel continued. “You know the defences, the routines. Suppose you didn’t have to worry about walls, or guards, or locked doors. Do you think you could find and kill Orvas Dren?”  
  
“Yes.” Cel’s reply was instant, scampering along the top of the bookcase and lunging precariously towards Ire. “Oh yes. Oh yes oh yes oh yes oh yes oh yes. I could kill him with my knives, or I could kill him with my teeth, or my fingers or my toes! I could–”  
  
“Fucking stop it!!” Bodu was angry now, rounding on Iriel. “Why’re you saying this stuff? D'you know how long it’s taken for him to stop being like this all the time, not able to–?”  
  
“I could get you in.” Ire’s eyes were as wide as Celegorn’s, their noses almost touched. “I could do it. I don’t know how, or why, but lately, I can… go through things. Solid things. I… I could do it. I could make us both invisible, and I could go through gates and doors and open them for you. Get you right inside his room. I could do it.”  
  
The wet black abyss of Cel’s eyes reflected his own back to him. “Huleeya was right,” Ire said. “One death, the right death, can change everything.” He grinned.  
  
The abyss grinned back. “I’ll get my revenge,” Cel whispered. “My revenge.” He flung his arms around Iriel and kissed him on the mouth. “MY REVENGE!!!!” With a whoop of joy, he vaulted over Ire’s shoulders, and vanished up the stairs.   
  
There was a smash. Ire turned to see Bodu’s lock in pieces on the floor, and the Orc’s face contorted with rage. “What have you DONE?!” he roared. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TRYNA DO TO MY BRO?!!”


	169. experiment

_I descended the helicoid stair to the Blood Dungeon. Each obsidian footstep colder then the last, lancing through my mist-satin slippers, but I yielded not to trembling. I am Queen of this Castle, I bethought myself. I am mistress of this frigid chill, just as I am mistress of this stair and this Dungeon._  
  
_A small motion of my left index finger dismissed Aldaril. He withdrew to the Neolarium with a low bow._

_I tugged off my mothskin gloves and let them fall. I pressed my bare skin to the wall, to the red-throated quartz that encircled my life like the fist of an angry god. How deep, I marvelled, did these crushing rocks run, how many girls had they choked with their savage love? And yet: love it was. Flowing from the immortal veins of our ancient bloodline, congealing into the very stone, raw and red and thunderous. The Castle! Duskstone Castle! Ever the third beating heart in my monster of a marriage! I felt its embrace, and now, at last, I returned it.  
  
From that instant henceforth, I had no cause to whisper pallid invocations to sustain my quailing Will. I knew myself the immutable Queen of these walls, and all they contained therein.  
  
__Alone, I approached the Cell.  
  
My husband remained as the Umbral Guard had left him, three days prior. Secured by two great manacles set high into the wall, his sinewed arms were forced aloft, and only his prodigious height ensured his feet yet found purchase upon the floor. His head hung limp, white hair stained sanguineous with the sindil wax of his Chastening. A mere twist of ragged cloth concealed his loins.  
  
__“How fare you, Ralentir?”  
  
__He did not lift his head. “You no longer call me your lord, then.”  
  
__“Are you my lord? I see naught but a prisoner of the Castle.”  
  
__His mangled tresses shook with hollow laughter. “And you are its Queen, Lindaale.”  
  
He raised his eyes, then, and beheld me. Anger flashed within them and his chains made clashing din as they thwarted the violence he sought upon me. “That gown! You dare?”  
  
__“I must act in accordance with my duty, Ralentir. You taught me that. As ruler of the Castle, my duties are many. A Queen must dress for the honour of her station, lest she dishonour the station itself.”  
  
__“My Kin-Mother’s Immaculation gown? Of all the gowns, in all the silk-chambers in all the Castle, you choose that?!”  
  
__I pressed my fingertips to my breast. Harder still, I felt his gaze crush against me, as my touch rose to the damselfly lacework at the throat. “Shall you tell me I defile it?”  
  
O, how he snarled against his restraints like a beast of the forest! And O, how my smile bloomed softly, like a white flower ‘neath the stars.  
  
__Said he: “You are my sky-lawed wife, Lindaale! You are bound and contracted before the Ancestral Echoes, and your chief duty is that of obedience to me!”  
__  
__“I am contracted to the King of Dusk,” responded I. “But the Vale of Dusk knows no King, for his sins have cast him down, and the Tesseract Spire has refracted him unworthy. Only a Queen sits the Duskstone Chair, now.”  
__  
__He growled low in his throat, all nobility quite driven from him, in his state of degradation. Only his amethyst eyes remained those of a Prince of the Royal House. He raised his chin. “'Twas not I who killed the Semiarch of Firsthold, and you know that it was not.”  
  
__I smiled, and mistress’d my tongue. I smoothed a lock of hair that had escaped my dew-coral braid-frame and spilled upon my collarbone, its narrow arc discernible e'en through my silks. For all my husband’s shattered vitriol, he could not conceal the proofs of his desire from me, and I knew my triumph near complete.  
  
__“If you speak rightly,” said I, when sufficient time had elapsed, “then I could testify before the Spire for you, under a Glyph of Truth. As Queen, they may not compel me, but I may volunteer my testimony.”  
  
__I beheld his tongue emerge, to moisten his parched lips.  
__  
__“You ask me to renounce my throne to you, Ralentir. What might you offer me, in exchange for so precious a gift?”  
  
__His chest heaved, though he could not shape words. And yet, in his tormented countenance, I divined his answer. It pleased me greatly.  
  
__“You are right in one respect, my poor Ralentir,” I spake in no little gentleness. “Lindaale of Shimmerene was contracted to the King of Dusk. But to this ruined shell of a man, this frail form of a woman is bound, as wife. And a wife, too, has duties to perform.”  
  
__“Lindaale…”  
__  
He could not unfasten his eyes from me as I drew nigh him, his gaze a rough and ravenous thing. When I knelt before him, his breathing grew ragged as his straining–_  
  
“HEY, IRE!”  
  
Iriel spasmed in panic, shoving the book beneath the bedcovers as the trapdoor flew open. “What!?”  
  
He needn’t have worried - Julan was too busy manoeuvring various objects up the ladder with him, one of which was a steaming cup of tea. He veered and side-stepped his way across the room with it, the floor littered with precarious towers of books. With most of the bookcases conscripted for barricades, Iriel’s attic had become a sort of library-cum-refugee-camp. Since Iriel had spent most of the last week in bed, this worked out well.  
  
“Helende’s about to try one of her death-defying supply runs,” Julan informed him, passing over the tea. “D'you want anything from town? Nothing bigger or heavier than an ash-yam, she says. Got any letters to go to the docks?”  
  
“No, thank you.” His mouth twitched at the corner, riding out the inevitable surge of guilt about all the letters he ought to write, and couldn’t. As a distraction, he sipped the tea, but it only increased his grimace.  
  
Julan noticed. “Did I mess it up again?”  
  
“Sorry. I mean, thank you. It’s just so bitter, without sugar.”  
  
“We’re out.” Julan was puzzled. “But I thought you preferred it unsweetened.”  
  
“Sometimes I do, but… it depends. On…” He made a vague gesture. “Sorry, I know that’s not helpful. Um… thank you.” He set the cup on the overturned crate by the bed.  
  
Julan picked up the book resting on Iriel’s blankets and read the cover. “What’re you reading? Anti… keddents?”  
  
“Antecedents. Like 'ancestors’.”  
  
“Antecedents of Dwemer Law. A historical account of the developments…” Already bored, he tossed it back to Ire with a dubious expression. “Is it interesting?”  
  
“No.”  
“Then–”  
“I’ve been conducting some more experiments.”  
“On what?”  
  
“Myself.” He motioned to smooth his hair back from his forehead, although there was little to smooth. “What types of information I’m still capable of understanding, and retaining.”  
  
“How’s it going?”  
  
He dropped his hand back into his lap. “Poorly.”  
  
Inwardly, Ire groaned, as the familiar sound began of Julan hauling out the emotional disaster clean-up equipment. _I honestly wasn’t fishing for reassurance, I’m fine. He doesn’t need to make all this effort. I’m not even upset. All I am doing is neutrally stating objective facts.  
  
_ “Listen, give yourself a break. You’re still recovering. You’re a magical genius, and all that talent can’t just vanish.”  
  
“Firstly, why can’t it? Secondly, I’m not a magical genius.”  
  
“Yes you are, come on. Don’t get all–”  
  
“No.” Ire’s voice was calm, but implacable. “I’m not. That’s not self-pity, it’s truth. Never in my life have I possessed any innate genius for magic.”  
  
“How’d you get into the Tower as a fisherman’s son, then? Luck? C'mon Ire, we know what  _your_ luck’s like.”  
  
Iriel stared at his hands. “Twenty years of hard work,” he said bleakly. “Mostly my ma’s.”  
  
“Don’t give me that scuttle. She did it all for you, did she?”  
  
“In a way. She taught me at home from as early as I can remember. High-caste children, like she used to be, all have private tutors. She didn’t want me to fall behind them, so she thought she’d try and be mine, pass on her classical education.”  
  
“What’s in one of those, then?"  _I wish he wouldn’t humour me like this._    
  
"Basics, at first. Reading, writing, numerology, astrology. History and protocol.”  
  
“Protocol?”  
  
“The rules, you know. She said they were oppressive rubbish, but you had to know how something worked in order to take it apart.”  
  
He shifted his legs, to let Julan sit down on the bed. “Later, she taught me the arts. Sketching, music. Lots of calligraphy. I hadn’t been drawn towards magic at that point, so I think she was grooming me for some sort of scriptorial post. We couldn’t afford instruments, so music was mostly singing, but I did learn to read notation. Oh, and we did botany. She was a very keen gardener, my mam, and she taught me about plants. Some of it was things I’d use for alchemy, later.”  
  
“Sounds like she crammed a lot into you, considering you can’t even hunt, or cook, or anything, y'know, useful.”  
  
A small, grim smile appeared on Ire’s face. “I loved it. Up until the age of ten, my childhood was really very happy.”  
  
“What happened when you were ten?”  
  
Iriel shivered, and drew the blankets up to his chin. “I went to  _school_.”  
  
Julan snorted. “Everything you’ve ever said about the school thing sounds  _really_  weird.”  
  
Iriel glanced at him. Ran a surface-analysis of his face, scanning for evidence of forgery, in his expression of genuine interest. It came up negative, which only made Ire suspect flaws in his methods. He gave in to temptation anyway. He so rarely felt like talking, these days, but now he’d begun, the pressure in his brain was easing slightly.   
  
“Education in Summerset is divided according to caste.” he said. “The highbloods go to an Academy. It prepares you to enter one of the Towers, run a Kinhold, join a Salon.  _Important_  things. Everyone else goes to a school. Merchants, workers, the rabble. I was rabble. My school was all farmers’ and tailors’ kids. Class half empty during the blossom harvest, that sort of thing. And since none of them had mothers like mine, none of them could even read. I spent all my time at school trying not to fall asleep, as we learned things I’d been doing for years. The other kids despised me, obviously. And so did the Sapiati, because I knew everything already. I didn’t flaunt it, in fact, I soon learned never, ever to show it, but they could still tell, and it infuriated them.  
  
"My ma, of course, hadn’t slowed down for a moment. Especially once she discovered I had magical potential. The arcane sciences are only taught at Academies, so she got Firi’s ma to make copies of all Firi’s reading lists and syllabi. I got sent over to Firi’s kinhold most nights, to copy her notes and help her with projects. On other nights, she’d make up work for me herself. I preferred Firi’s house, by far. Honestly, I did so much of her homework for her, they should have given  _me_  her final diploma.” His eyes flashed pride, for a second, and Julan grinned.  
  
“Theory and practice are separate worlds, in Summerset. In theory, education is the bedrock of our civilisation, and a pure meritocracy, in which the finest magical minds of every generation are called, by the ineffable will of Aetherius, to unite themselves at the Crystal Tower, in the pursuit of Arcane Truth. In practice, there’s an exam. Several exams. And if you haven’t had the correct educational preparation for the whole of your delicate noble upbringing, you haven’t a prayer. Probably wouldn’t even understand the paper. Me, I didn’t have the correct preparation, but I had my ma, and the full force of her determination to give me as close a facsimile of it as she could wrangle together. The standard age for Tower intake is twenty, and the exams would fall in the summer of my nineteenth year. All her years of moulding me were going to culminate then.  
  
"I was seventeen, when I started fucking it all up. So utterly senseless of me, because I didn’t give a shit about Valtir, barely even  _liked_  him. My mother was furious for multiple reasons, but the educationally relevant one was that I didn’t have access to Firi’s classwork any more. She managed to get me some books, somehow. I don’t know exactly what she did; sold some jewellery, perhaps. I only know she was  _most_  upset about it, and never let me forget the  _great_  sacrifices she was making, and I had better not do anything else to jeopardise her plans. The one bright side was that after that, she let me go to the library on my own, to study, when things got too unbearable at home.  
  
"Then the Syonilis drama happened, and I finally told her to stuff her entire social engineering experiment. All except one part: the Tower. That part felt mine, still. I had to get there, had to. But once my ma officially gave up on me, there wasn’t anyone else to help. The last few months, I practically lived in the library. I almost worked myself to death, but it was worth it. 'You don’t deserve this,’ she said, when the scroll came. 'I do,’ I told her.” Iriel’s mouth tightened in something like amusement. “Oh, arrogant brat phase. How I miss you.”  
  
“You were right, though.”  
  
“Perhaps. But… my point is that I never had any innate genius. I always had to struggle for everything, always. At the Tower it only got harder, living among all these incredible minds.”  
  
“Thought you said they were all thick nobles, who got there on blood alone.”  
  
“I exaggerate when I’m bitter. They existed, but they were the minority. Most people were frighteningly intelligent. And I knew they thought I didn’t belong, so I’d get no leeway if I failed. When I failed.”  
  
“You didn’t fail. You were expelled for–”  
  
“For something I might have got away with, had my test results been top of all my classes. But I’d been slipping… letting myself get distracted.”  
  
“You were in love.”  
  
“I was a fool.” He looked up. His smile was forced, but sincerely so. “I’m sorry I get like this. My head’s such an echo-chamber, but it helps to open a window, sometimes. Thank you for contradicting me. I appreciate the effort.”  
  
“Even if you don’t believe me.”  
  
Iriel’s head made a slight movement, like a flinch from an unseen attack. “It’s not… even if…” A flickering frown. “…It doesn’t matter, now. Whether I was a genius or a hard-scrabbling fake, it’s all gone. My study methods don’t work any more. I can’t concentrate long enough to get through a page, and when I think I have, I realise I can’t remember a thing, afterwards.”  
  
Julan regarded  _Antecedents of Dwemer Law_  balefully. “I’m not surprised. Maybe you should try something less boring for your experiments.” His eye caught on a flash of lurid red-gold binding visible above Iriel’s shifted blankets. “Hey, what’ve you–?”  
  
Ire’s face froze, but he clutched at the covers too late to defend against Julan’s darting hand. Julan tilted the book towards the light, and squinted at the floridly embossed title. “Duskstone Book Four: Ralentir’s Crucible,” he read, with a smirk that increased in parallel with Iriel’s blush. He raised an eyebrow.  
  
“Um,” said Iriel. “Well. This is actually… a slightly different kind of experiment. Still on myself, but in… um…” His colour rose to sunset-shaming levels of crimson. “…desire. What I’m still… capable of… um. Wanting.”  
  
“Do you… want any help with that?”  
  
Ire couldn’t look up. “Nnn… Not… not just now.”

“OK.” Julan dropped the book onto the bed, a grin in his voice. “I’ll let you get back to it, then.”  
  
Through a heat-haze of shame, Iriel heard footsteps cross the floor. “Wait!” he managed. “Don’t go yet! What have you been… um… is everyone else all right? Are things…?”  
  
“Yeah, not bad. For now. Look, Bodu found me this!” Julan bent for something he’d left by the trapdoor, on arrival. “A new bonemould shield!” He brought it forward for inspection, then hesitated. “Sorry, you, uh… probably don’t want this on the bed, do you?”  
  
Iriel shrugged. “Why not? It’s not as if it’s made of actual bone.”  
  
Julan paused, trying to detect if Ire was joking. “Uh…”  
  
The awkward silence was shattered by shrieks and bellows from downstairs. After a moment of tense concentration, Julan relaxed. “It’s not an attack. Just Cel and Bodu fighting again.” As a fresh strain of guilt flickered across Iriel’s face, he added, “It… might be good if you talked to Bodu. If you’re still set on this plan of yours.”  
  
“I am.” Ire nodded, harder and longer than he really needed to. “It’s… something I can do.”  
  
“Yeah, I figured. I…” Julan shifted his weight, hand moving to his neck. “I wish I could come with you, but… I can see why you and Cel going alone makes more sense. And I know you can do what you say you can, and after what I said about slaves… and other things… I’d be a hypocrite to stand in your way, but… How long now, before you go?”  
  
“Six days. Then it’s the first of Sun’s Height, when Cel says they hire new guards, and retire the older veterans. If we go then, they’ll still be disorganised and untrained.”  
  
“Right. The two of you know what you’re doing. And Helende agreed it was worth trying, so Bodu know he’s been overruled, but… you understand why he’s scared, don’t you? Can’t you try and reassure him, tell him you’re not gonna let anything bad happen to Cel? It’s all right for you, hiding up here. Down there, it’s nothing but yelling and sulking, and the worst part is Cel’s started trying to crawl into MY bed when he has nightmares, so  _please_.”  
  
After a moment, Iriel nodded again, more gently. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, um. Originally, I only intended to write a couple of short paragraphs from Iriel's book, y'know, for flavour. IT GOT AWAY FROM ME. I still occasionally have fantasies about writing all six volumes of the Lindaale saga for actual real. But I probably won't.


	170. words

After a week of scarcely leaving his bed, Iriel was moving through the building. Via the stairs and hallways, for the most part, although he had the horrible feeling if he unfocused his skin just a shade more, he could fall straight through the floor. What prevented him wasn’t a fear of the drop, or the landing. He was scared he might never stop falling.  
  
 _And you might startle someone_ , he told himself, though without much conviction. Lately, people tended not to notice, when he entered a room. Such as Helende, at the bar-room window now, frowning out between the boards. He greeted her, and she twitched, but it wasn’t until his third attempt that she turned and smiled vaguely in his general direction.

He would have asked Erer Darothril about it, but like Ire, Darothril remained in his room. Unlike Ire, Darothril was doing something constructive - maintaining the defensive spells. The few times Ire had seen him shuffle out, he was glassy-eyed and monosyllabic, streaks of white in his wiry, black mane.  
  
 _If you weren’t so useless, you could help him. But I am, and I can’t, so… I have to do something else._  
  
The door to Erer’s room opened, and Helende’s head jerked towards it. “How’s he doing, Em?”  
  
Muriel emerged with a tray of half-eaten porridge, and laid it on the bar. “Sleeping, by all that’s merciful. Told me to wake him in an hour, to redo the spark traps, but I’ll wait till I see ‘em flicker, let him go as long as I can.”  
  
“You’re a rare gem.” Helende’s voice was clipped, almost (but not quite) to the point of insincerity.  
  
“Pretty but useless? Reckon you’ve got me backwards.” Muriel rubbed her brow, then rested the hand on her hip. “But I’m not doing half the labour he’s doing.”  
  
Helende returned her gaze to the window. “Don’t I know it.”  
  
Muriel regarded her steadily. “I know we’ve not seen eye to eye, lately, but I want you to know that as much as I value this home o’ mine, I wouldn’t see any more people hurt over it.”  
  
“That’s good to hear.”  
  
“How much longer can he carry this on safely, d'you reckon? Before–”  
  
“Stars, Em, don’t ask me. I may be Altmer, but my tutors despaired of my magical aptitude. Go up and ask Iriel, if you can drag two words out of him today.” _She’s already forgotten I’m here.  
  
_ “I may do that.” Muriel began stacking dirty things from the bar onto her tray. “I’d like an idea o’ where 'enough’ is, before he gets himself beyond it.”  
  
“I think that’s wise,” Helende said. “I rather suspect Erer won’t tell you that, himself. For all the harsh things I said about you coercing him, pressuring him… I was wrong. It’s all him, isn’t it? He’s doing it  _for_  you, but it’s him. He loves you rather terribly, I think.” Muriel’s hands had stilled amidst the cutlery, as Helende went on, with a slight chuckle in her voice: “I don’t know how I missed it, all this time.”  
  
Muriel stared fixedly at a teaspoon. “I knew,” she whispered, “but I never saw the point in dwelling. Not when it wasn’t likely to amount to anything, both of us being what we are.”  
  
“And what’s that, pray tell?”  
  
“I couldn’t say what he is, but I’m a practical woman.”  
  
“I couldn’t say what he is either, but he’s nothing if not impractical. Possibly the least practical mage in the Aurbis, which is why he’s one of the greatest. And let him love you or don’t, Em, but please find an easier way for him to prove it to you than this.”  
  
“He always went on about the Endeavour,” Muriel mumbled into her loaded tray. “Of how we must be tested, to get us past our limits. 'Remember that Boethiah asked you to become the colour of bruise. How else to show yourselves people of the exodus into the vital: pain?’ I thought that was only for his sort, but now… I’m thinking maybe we were too much alike, in that way.”  
  
“You’ve a Dunmeri soul.” Helende didn’t make it sound like a compliment. “The pair of you are welcome to quote the Sermons till the moons fall down, but I never had much time for romanticising the endurance of pain. Or rather, I did. I had fifty years, and I wish I could send them back and get new ones, because they were worthless, Em. Worthless.”

As Muriel’s shoulders began to shake, and Helende wrapped her arms around her, Iriel hastened away, praying his inadvertent camouflage would last until he gained the stairs. It did, but as he descended, he had the oddest sensation he wasn’t stepping downwards, so much as… raising the stairs towards himself. As if he were immobile, and shifting the entire house with telekinesis. The pressure beneath his feet seemed… artificial, somehow.  
  
He drifted down the hallway towards the kitchen, until the voices he heard within made him pull back from the threshold.  
  
“Call him that again, and you’re getting this next arrow somewhere you won’t like it.”  
  
“Oh no, I’m so scared. Terrified.”  
  
A scraping sound that Iriel recognised as knife on wood. The scuffling rattle of a thin wooden rod being tossed onto a pile of others.  
  
“How many need ghost-tips?”  
  
“Cel said twenty. And ten flame-arrows.”  
  
Small, regular tinks of metal on stone.  
  
“I’m only  _saying_. If you’re into fucking boys now, it explains a lot.”  
  
“I’m still not having this conversa– hey what d'you mean, explains a lot? Explains what?!”  
  
“Why you broke up with me.”  
  
“I… so… but… wh…” A long silence, punctuated by Julan inhaling sharply, only to change his mind about what he wanted to do with the breath, and release it again.  
  
At length, Shani tired of this. “No?”  
  
“No!!!”  
  
Iriel edged nearer the doorway, suspecting his presence would make little difference. They were sitting on the flagstones where the dining table used to be, Julan making shafts, and Shani fletching them. She was hunched over a racer-feather, carving out neat sections with one of Muriel’s fruit-knives. She had her own blades, but preferred blunting other people’s.  
  
“Well. You can’t blame me for thinking it. You clearly like him a lot more than you ever did me.”  
  
“Why d'you always have to say these things?”  
  
“All the time, you used to tell me how much more important your mission was than me. But you’re happy to throw it away for him.”  
  
“I’m  _not_  throwing–”  
  
“You left the Grazelands a year ago. Is the Sharmat any more dead now, than he was then?”  
  
“Get blight, Sha.”  
  
“I might, for all you care. What have you done, this whole year, except trail after him like a moony guar?”  
  
“Nothing. That what you want to hear? You’re right. Nothing. Happy now?”  
  
“I’m always happy. I hope you’re happy too. I hope it was worth it. Another year of people getting sick, losing our herds, babies dying. I hope you getting some hot Altmer dick made it all worthwhile.”  
  
“You don’t even believe in my mission. You always said it was impossible, but you’re going to guilt me with failing anyway?”  
  
“Why not? Why aren’t you?”  
  
A pause, while the explosion Iriel expected didn’t come, though the blade sounds increased in volume for a while.  
  
“You can’t tell me anything I haven’t already thought.”  
  
“Don’t say that like it’s an answer. If you knew, it makes it worse, not better.”  
  
“You’re right.”  
  
“And don’t agree with me just to shut me up!”  
  
“I don’t want to argue with you.”  
  
“And I don’t want to be stuck here with you!!”  
  
“Listen, if you’d stop insisting you have to take the damn guar, we could help you sneak out–”  
  
“Why help me? Why not just throw me outside to get stabbed, that’d make life easier for you! Blood and ash, why not save time, and do it yourself!”  
  
“Shani–”  
  
“Don’t.”  
  
“Can I at least say I don’t want you dead?”  
  
“Praise Azura.”  
  
“I don’t hate you, I never did. I’ll always care about you, I just… don’t–”  
  
“I KNOW, SHUT UP! And stop looking at me.”  
  
After a while, Iriel heard Julan’s knife slowly begin scraping along the arrow-shaft again.  
  
“I wish you had broken up with me because you preferred boys. Then there’d be nothing I could have done about it. I don’t want you back - I’m not  _stupid_. I only want to know why. What it was I did, or didn’t, that made you–”  
  
“There  _was_  no why, you didn’t do anything! When I fought with Mother over you… I thought I was following my heart, but it was anger that powered me through the mountains for days, and then… once that faded… I just felt… empty. I thought love would show me what I really wanted, but when I tried to find it, it wasn’t there any more. Not in the same way. I still don’t know why. That’s why I had to cover it with something else, because I knew you’d argue, and cry, and I… I couldn’t face that, when I couldn’t explain it or justify it. You didn’t do anything wrong, it just happened.”  
  
“That’s worse than anything else you could have said.”  
  
“Shani… I’m–”  
  
“Don’t you dare apologise to me Julan Kaushibael, or I’ll kick you in the dick so hard you’ll be pissing in Akavir.”  
  
“…Got it.”  
  
“So… what’ve I missed? How’s the tribe, is everyone OK?”  
  
“Recently? Ummm… I think it’s all depressing. Nummu had a dead baby again. We lost a lot of shalk, two more guar, and the egg clutches were really bad this year. But no real people died, so it’s been worse.” She gave an odd, scornful laugh. “Don’t worry about us. We’re  _survivors_.”  
  
Julan sighed. “If I knew how to make things better for you, I would. You don’t need to–”  
  
“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at a stupid thing Mamaea said to me, once. She told me I was a survivor, and when I said I didn’t feel like one, she said it wasn’t about that. You’re still here, she said, after everything. Things happened, and you’re still breathing. That’s all it takes. You don’t need to feel any special way, or do any special thing. You’re alive, so you’re a survivor.”  
  
A snort. “Stupid. She made it meaningless. I want more from my life than  _breathing_. I  _want_  to feel something.” Irritably, she brushed away the remnants of a feather from the flagstones. “What I hate most, is that even though I don’t like what she said, sometimes it still helps.”  
  
Taking another racer-feather, she twirled it between her fingers. “What else has happened? Both Dutadalk’s sons have left for the city now, even the cute one I hoped might stay. Oh! Minabibi got into trouble with Sinnammu for losing a runaway slave the hunters caught, that was funny.”  
  
“Funny to you, maybe.”  
  
“That’s what I said!”  
  
“Besides, I already knew about Didanat leaving, that was years ago, when I was still around the camp. His leaving celebration was the night we stole the boat, remember?”  
  
“I know that, you s'wit! I meant now Vassir’s left, too.” A pause. “You… thought Didi was the cute one? You had a crush on  _Didi?!_ ”  
  
“Wait, I never–”  
  
“That’s disgusting, what’s wrong with you?! Vassir was always the good looking twin! Didi was a pile of gross pimples with kagouti teeth and a stupid haircut, how could you–”  
  
“He– OK, first, I  _liked_  his hair. And he didn’t make fun of me as much as the others, and… he lent me a knife, once and… oh gods, just shut up and pass me another bit of wood.”  
  
“Azura’s star, I hate that I can’t make fun of your awful taste without catching myself on the blade.”  
  
“Ah, but I dumped you, didn’t I? Take the shot, Shilabi.”  
  
Iriel left them both laughing, and retreated from the doorway.  
  
Cautiously buoyed by the atmosphere of quiet reconciliation the house was breathing today, he approached the front room, where Bodu was on watch.  
  
Determined not to be outdone by Cel, he was on the bookcase, a knotted rope hanging from the barricade hinting at the means of his ascent. Bodu wasn’t interested in talking about his injuries, or their origins. He never complained, aside from his exaggerated moans of agony, when asked to do something he found boring. But those were so cheerfully theatrical that Ire suspected they were designed to stave off, rather than encourage, genuine discussion of his pain, inner or outer.  
  
He spent a lot of time in the basement room he shared with Celegorn, working on his upper-body strength with iron weights. Whenever he emerged, sweat-stained and ruddy, he always claimed his endeavours were “going great, pal, thanks!” His tone was always identically cheery, but sometimes his eyes would flicker away, when he grinned. When required, he got from room to room on Pasha, who would do her level best to kick her way through a locked door, if she heard his whistle from anywhere in the building.  
  
Bodu owned a large, steel crossbow, which he had positioned to point out through the spyhole, and the broken window beyond. He was sighting along it, when Iriel came in, scanning the road.  
  
Ire clenched his fists, and continued clenching them until he could actually feel his nails in his palms, distilling himself until he was as present as he could get. Next was speech, he knew, and he hoped he had enough of himself for it.  
  
“Bodu? Can I have a few words?”  
  
Bodu looked down at him. He didn’t actually swing the crossbow round and aim it at Iriel, but on some level, he was clearly doing it. “Sure, pal,” he said evenly. “Have as many as you like.”  
  
“Um. Thank you.” Ire took another breath. “I want to apologise. For… over-exciting Celegorn the way I did. I should have handled things far more delicately.”  
  
“Ya think?” Bodu idly rubbed a tusk, and let the silence hang, as Iriel chewed his lip and fretted his fingers.  
  
“Yes. I’m sorry I… damaged his progress. You think I don’t understand, but I do.”  
  
Looking up into Bodu’s golden glare of withering distrust, Ire struggled to remind himself that the Orc was still only nineteen, and not nearly as worldly as he made out.  
  
“You’re trying to help someone through the sensitive process of shaking off certain… defensive behaviours, instilled by a traumatic upbringing. Who has spent their life fixating on one course of action as the one thing that will solve their problems and make up for their flaws, fill the void left by all the things they were denied. But… in reality, the thing they want to do is horribly misguided and, ultimately, self-destructive, and the real reason it appeals, is that it reinforces all their negative brain patterns, which they actually need to move  _beyond_ , in order to heal, and–”  
  
Bodu yawned. “Could you, like, not talk in vague nerd-code, for once?”  
  
“I’m saying I’ve been in your position. Trying to stop someone I care about from doing something stupid. And I’d be angry too, if someone provoked him, and undid all the progress he’d made.”  
  
Bodu was creasing his face into the disgruntled knot of someone trying to decide if he cares enough about the big picture to finish putting the pieces together. “You’re still not being clear, pal. This about Julan and that dumb past life shit he’s into? I kinda picked up the gist from some stuff Shani said, but I don’t really get it.”  
  
“Yes! Exactly!” Now that he could plausibly blame someone else for the data breach, Iriel gratefully dropped his awkward attempts at dissimulation. “That blighted Nerevarine thing, this heretical Incarnate obsession! I tried so hard to get him out of it, it tore us apart! I was so scared that anything I told him would cause him to rush off and get himself killed, doing something suicidally heroic. It was ridiculous, I ended up lying and concealing so much it destroyed any trust we ever had! But I was only trying, in my short-sighted, misguided way, to protect him. So believe me, I do understand.”  
  
Bodu bestowed  a condescending smirk upon Iriel, from on high. “Serves you right, pal. You can’t be lying to your bro, that’s rule number two.”  
  
“I didn’t want to!” choked Ire. “I hated every shitting minute of it, the endless subterfuge, as they tried to make me into a secret fucking agent, it was a nightmare!”  
  
“Buddy, you really lost me.”  
  
“Ugh! The Empire. They only released me from jail because they thought they could use various random pieces of my personal information to sort of… crowbar me into the Nerevarine role. So of course, Julan thought I was trying to usurp him, and everything went to Oblivion. Thank fuck it’s all over now.”  
  
“Wait, you were doing that Neveravarine thing too? What the shit?”  
  
“Oh yes.” Ire leaned on the barricade, rubbing his forehead. “I had high-level international backing for my delusional nonsense, didn’t I? I wasn’t some nobody with guarskin pants and a sword, I had  _Imperial politics_  on my side. They had me traipsing round Ashlander camps, taking notes on what prophecy I had to carry out next from Azura! Sheo-fucking-gorath…” He rolled his eyes ceilingwards, then sideways onto Bodu. “I was lucky to get free of it before those fanatical bigots in the Temple caught on.”  
  
Bodu was laughing, now. “Buddy, that’s crazy. I never woulda guessed you were mixed up in such crazy shit.” He beamed. “I’m glad we’re seeing things the same, now, yeah? I don’t like feelin’ sore at people, it’s not in my nature, y'know? We all gotta be family here.”  
  
Ire nodded vigorously. “Right. So I really do understand, and I hope you know I’ll be doing my absolute best to look after Cel, and stop him getting caught up on this whole revenge thing. We’ll do the job, and we’ll get out.”  
  
Bodu’s grin had frozen. “Wait, you’re still gonna take him to Dren? I thought you said–”  
  
“Of course! I wish we didn’t have to, and I’m sorry I introduced the idea so recklessly, but this is about more than just Celegorn’s mental health, it’s about the greater good! Taking down Orvas Dren means saving the Guild and striking a blow against slavery across all of Vvardenfell!”  
  
Ire sucked in a breath. “Also… I’ve learned that if you love someone, you can’t protect them by showing you doubt them. Sometimes… it’s terrifying, but you have to trust people, even when they’re wrong. You have to let Cel know you have faith in him, that you share his self-belief. You have to give him control of his own life. Or you’re not really helping him move forwards from his past at all.”  
  
Bodu stared at Iriel for a while. His expression twitched, then softened. “All right, pal,” he said quietly. “I hear you. You do what you gotta do, yeah?”


	171. swords

In treacherous twilight, Iriel ghosted through cool grass until his fingers found the wall. In the dark, he didn’t need to close his eyes. It was enough to fill his mind with transience, insubstantiality, the way that, considered cosmically, in the interminable march of the ages, both he and this wall barely existed. Didn’t exist, on chronological average.  
  
He had serious questions about whether what he was doing even counted as Illusion. If he was changing the solidity of the wall, surely that was Alteration, perhaps even rediscovering the lost art of Passwall? And yet, he was far from certain he was altering the wall. Everything about the process still  _felt_  like Illusion.

He wished he could talk to Erer Darothril, because the old mage’s words kept coming back to haunt him.  _Our perceptions are the very first point of contact that any of us has with the world. Change those, and you change everything. This is never more true, or more powerful, than when we are changing our own perceptions._  
  
In the absence of expert advice (and his own usual mental rigor), nonsensical thoughts kept flooding his head.  
  
… _illusion governs the senses, and touch is a sense… if illusion spells can alter your projected sound or image, why can’t they do it with your projected solidity? …what does it really mean, to touch something? what if it was only ever a sensation? what if there is no solidity beyond what I imagine? what if the aurbis itself is an illusion? what if alteration and illusion were the same thing all along? what if I never needed to convince the universe, all I had to do was convince myself?  
  
_ These thoughts were both unpleasant and disorienting, but he had to admit, they were effective. The emptiness in his chest swelled and heightened into a climax of nullification (he was trying not to call it a voidgasm, he really was) until every sense dissolved into grey fuzz. Clinging to the memory of his physical form and its operation, he lurched blindly forwards. When the numb wave receded, he found himself, slightly nauseous, on the other side of the wall.  
  
He wasn’t at the Dren Plantation, not yet. That journey would begin the following morning, when he and Celegorn took a boat to Vivec, and hiked through the Ascadian Isles. Tonight, it was only Muriel’s garden wall he was bypassing. It was his turn to make a dangerous run into Sadrith Mora town, and Tong scouts were easier to evade, at the back of the building. Initially, only Helende had been capable of enough stealth to go, but recently, Iriel had begun sharing the task with her. He needed the practice, after all. Not at moving undetected, but at the far greater challenge of going outside and encountering people.  
  
He scurried away from the cornerclub, aware that Erer would only drop the anti-illusion traps for a few more seconds. As he scrambled through the brush, he heard a slight noise behind him, a clink of something on stone, high on the wall. Whoever it was was invisible, but Iriel could picture their drop into the soft moss beneath the wall, and time the rhythm of their steps. He paused, already half-expecting what came next.   
  
“Ire!” Julan whispered just loud enough to be heard. “Wait for me! Where are you?”  
  
Thankful (or perhaps not) that Julan couldn’t see his exasperated expression, Iriel darted back, flailing an arm towards the sounds until he hit solid Dunmer. Fumbling for Julan’s hand, he grabbed it, and yanked him clear of the gauntlet of traps and Camonna Tong.  
  
Still invisible, they careened into the empty road leading to town, and kept sprinting along it until Ire was sure they were beyond hostile earshot. Then he ground to a halt, and hissed into empty space: “You’re not supposed to be here! Helende’s going to be furious!”  
  
The air in front of him giggled. “As if she cares if I get myself stabbed!” Julan sounded high on the thrill of escape. “Bodu’s the one who clung to my legs and begged me not to go! But then, he’s the only person in the place who hasn’t wanted to kill me at one time or another!”  
  
“Stop playing the martyr, nobody wants you dead! You might have got out safely, but getting back in’s going to be the hard part!”  
  
“We’ll be fiiiine! We got past the guards in that Temple basement, remember?”  
  
“That was different! We–” Iriel’s brain suddenly interrupted him with the completed analysis of one of the shapes encountered in his brief, hand-locating survey of Julan’s anatomy. “Gods, you didn’t seriously… Please tell me that wasn’t your  _sword_  I could feel, back there.”  
  
“Maybe I’m just happy to se–”  
“JULAN.”  
“…ok, yes, i brought my sword.”   
“Why?! It’s too bright and bulky for a stealth mission!”  
“In case I need it! There’s Camonna Tong everywhere!”  
“You don’t have to come and protect me, I’ll be far safer alone!”  
  
A derisive huff of breath. “I know that! I’m not here to protect you. I had to get out, that’s all! I’m going to lose my mind, stuck in there with those bickering scuttleheads all the time. Anyway… you’re heading off, tomorrow. I want to spend some time with you before you go.”  
  
“Spend… time?” Suspicion infested Iriel’s voice. “Can’t you wait until I get home, in an hour?”  
  
“Well… see… I heard Bodu ask you to take that letter to his friend at Fara’s Hole in the Wall, and I thought–”  
  
“Mara’s arse, Julan! You want to go to the TAVERN?! That’s what this is about? This is  _not_  a night out! And on no plane of existence will you dodge two-dozen Camonna Tong arrows if you’re coming home drunk, so don’t even THINK–”  
  
“One! Just one! To drink to your mission and bring you luck! When did I last get to take you for a drink? I’m buying!”  
  
“Is this,” Iriel enquired through gritted teeth, “your idea of a date?”  
  
Julan said nothing, but he still had Ire’s hand, and he squeezed it. Iriel, slipping back into partial visibility now, sighed. “ _One_  drink,” he said. “But only because Fara’s is an outlander bar, so it ought to be safe from Camonna Tong. And after that, we head back immediately.”  
  
  
They continued towards town, fingers intertwined. The stars were coming out.  
  
“So, uh… you look good tonight. Very… limpid.”  
  
Iriel made a small snorting noise and turned his head, the better to pretend he wasn’t laughing.  
  
“I’m serious! I love what you’ve done with your nipples.”  
  
“…Trashbag.”  
  
On the bridge to Wolverine Hall, the torches were lit, but no sentries were posted. Julan aimed the fort an insulting gesture as they passed, but Iriel only shrugged. The Imperial outpost had no jurisdiction to interfere with the guild war raging around Muriel’s, but at least they had that excuse. The Telvanni simply didn’t care.  
  
“It ought to be you,” Ire said, “getting to play Ebon Crest with me. I’m sorry it’s not.”  
  
Julan cocked an eyebrow at him. “If you were doing it with  _me_ , we’d do it right. We’d practice rope-swinging and wear black masks and capes.”  
  
“If  _I_  do it right, nobody will see what I’m wearing! Anyway, black’s not my colour. You’d look wonderful, though, I wish I could see that.”  
  
After grinning at his boots for a while, Julan said, “I’m just glad you have a mission. Like you said, it’s something you can do. That’s good to have.”  
  
“Are you still worried I don’t have anything to live for?” Ire was aiming for a lighthearted tone, but missed the mark. Realising he was sabotaging the mood, he tried for sincere, instead. “I know I have a lot of bad days, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, long-term, but… I’m working on it.”  
  
He gave Julan an earnest, if translucent, look. “And I  _do_  have things to live for. You  _know_  I do.” A smirk, he’d got his timing back. “I still owe you that fucking job reference.”  
  
  
They were in the outskirts of Sadrith Mora now, passing a Telvanni guard in bonemould armour and cephalopod helm. Iriel reflexively faded from view until the guard was gone, but afterwards, he elbowed Julan, and said, “I’m still very upset about that armour. How could you not tell me, all this time?”  
  
“You… never asked?”  
  
“But you know how ostiophobic I am!”  
  
“Yeah, but you seemed OK with it, so why would I give you more things to be scared of? Anyway, they’re rendered down, with resin and stuff. I thought maybe that didn’t affect you the same as when they’re people-shaped. Too different.”  
  
“Differently horrible! I’m cycling back through my memories, remembering all the times I ever touched it, and making myself feel ill.”  
  
Julan nudged him, very gently. “Maybe stop doing that, then.”  
  
“Did you have bonemould or chitin greaves on, that time I had my head in your lap?”  
  
“When you made me take them off, because they were painful to lie on? Or so you claimed.”  
“Yes.”  
“Chitin.”  
“You’re sure?”  
“Definitely chitin. Which is rendered bug parts, you know.”  
  
“Exoskeletons are fine. They are supposed to be outside the meat. Skeletons that are supposed to be  _inside_  the meat, but are currently  _outside_  the meat are problematic.”  
  
“OK, got it. Now all I have to do is figure out how your sugar in tea thing works.”  
  
Ire didn’t reply, but wrapped his fingers tighter around Julan’s.  
  
  
Navigating a short-cut along the shadowy edges of the closed-down marketplace, he heard Julan say suddenly, behind him: “I think that’s when I fell in love with you.”  
  
Iriel was ducking under a root, and almost hit his head. “Hmm? When…?”  
  
“When you took too much Night Eye and lay in my lap.”  
  
“Honestly?” Ire turned round, steadying himself on the roots. “Are you serious, or can I laugh?”  
  
“I’m serious,  _and_  you can laugh.”  
  
“What in Oblivion was so… I… so what was the appealing part? The alchemical incompetence, the tear-stained self-pity, or… look, you mustn’t tell me it was the awful, inappropriate flirting, or I’ll never learn.”  
  
“It wasn’t any of those. I think it was because… you made me feel… I dunno… useful. You told me exactly what you wanted me to do, and I could do it, and it helped.”  
  
“That’s all? Me being demanding and particular?”  
  
“I never usually know what people want from me. So I screw it up all the time, and upset them. I like that you tell me how I can make you feel better.”  
  
“And yet, you told me off for being loud in the Flowers of Gold.” He dodged the root Julan tried to snap at him, and pushed on through the gloom.  
  
  
Despite the late hour, many of the store-pods were still open. Candlelight shone from the lofty windows, and sigil-painted lanterns hung along the curved stem-rails leading up to the doors of the alchemists and apothecaries. Here in the town centre, violence was unlikely, the Tong as wary of Master Neloth’s guard patrols as anyone. Still, Iriel kept to the side-streets where possible. He was unsettled now, chewing his cheek, and occasionally glancing back at Julan.  
  
“I wish you’d stayed at home tonight,” he said, at length. “This was a bad idea.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” came the cheerful reply. “I’m having a great time.”  
  
“I know. That’s the trouble.” He hovered in the mossy gap between two housepods, his silhouette glitching at the edges. “You’re hoping for too much, again. I still don’t know if I can be…  if you ought to…” he grimaced “I mean, someone ordering you around really isn’t a healthy reason to fall for them.”  
  
“Maybe not. But it wasn’t the only reason.” Julan blinked and squinted, trying to keep Ire’s shifting form in focus. “Did you mean it, when you said you thought I’d have fallen in love with anyone? That it was only you, because you paid attention to me?”  
  
“I… At the time, I suppose so.”  
  
“Do you still believe it?”  
  
Ire was clinging to his bag-strap with both hands, as if it were holding him up, rather than the reverse. “Please, let’s not do this now.”  
  
“You’re leaving tomorrow morning.”  
  
“Yes, and… it’s better if we talk when I come back. Once I’ve tried to  _do_  something, when I have a better idea of what I’m capable of.”  
  
“I don’t  _care_  what you’re–!”  
  
“You should care! You have your own life and priorities that you’re neglecting! It means so much that you’d drop everything to be there when I need you, but I can’t make you wait for me forever, while the guilt eats you alive! I’m trying, but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough, yet. I’m  _not_  going to hold you back. And I refuse to raise either of our hopes.”  
  
“You’re right that it’s complicated.” Julan held up a hand, trying to prevent interruption before he could get his thoughts in order. “But it’s always been that way, and I can make my own decisions! Sheogorath… sometimes I think you convince yourself I’m not right in the head because you think that’s the only reason someone would care about you! Listen. If I stay with you, take care of you, or do what you ask, it’s because I want to. Not because you’re helpless, and  _definitely_ not because you’re an evil, manipulative monster. I swear, for someone who keeps claiming he’s selfish, you worry more about hurting other people than anyone I’ve ever known.”  
  
“Because I do it so much, that’s why!”  
  
“We all hurt each other, Iya, but so many times, I’ve seen you be kind, when it cost you a lot to do it. I don’t know what impossible standard you’ve set yourself, to be worthy of love, but you’re trying so hard, how could I not–”  
  
“Because I’m so terrified I’ll fail!”  
  
“There’s no exam for this, Iya.”  
  
Iriel’s jaw tensed, and his face blurred and faded from view. When Julan reached the next street, Ire reappeared beside him, eyes fixed on the road. He said little, as they began retrieving the items on Helende’s list.  
  
  
Once all other errands had been completed, they slipped through the fungal alleyways towards Fara’s Hole in the Wall Tavern. Pausing in the lamplight outside, Iriel dug out Bodu’s note from his bag. Julan peered around his shoulder. “Who’d he ask you to deliver it to?”  
  
Iriel examined the folded paper. It was unlabelled, but sealed with a blob of wax, and marked with an indent from the handle of Bodu’s favourite screwdriver. “He didn’t say. He just said I should give it to his friend, in the back room, and I didn’t need to worry about recognising them, because it would be obvious.”  
  
“OK. Let’s go in, then. One drink, and I promise I’ll behave.” He grinned. “You ready?”  
  
“Before we do…” Iriel caught his arm. “In case the tavern is too much, and ruins my head, and I can’t do this at the proper, end-of-date sort of time, I… want to… to say some things, and… um…”

He towed Julan gently to the side of the building, where the mushroom wall swelled softly outwards, and the steps up to the entrance curved above. For a while, he only stood there, taking deep breaths, arms folded across his chest.   
  
“I’m fine,” he said, when Julan glanced quizzically at him. “Give me a few more moments, I’m just trying to… let go of some things I don’t need.” One more long breath. When he spoke, his voice came in soft, Lillandril cadences, not-quite-calm waves.  
  
“I know that you love me. I… don’t know what I believe about why. It makes no sense to me. My insecurity fills the gap with all these things I shouldn’t believe, but it can be very persuasive.”  
  
“I don’t get why it matters, now, why I fell in love with you.” Julan leaned against the mushroom, watching Iriel’s face carefully. “Does it have to make sense, does it ever?”  
  
“I don’t know how to keep my doubts out of the echo chamber, if it doesn’t.”  
  
Julan rubbed a weary palm along his browbone and sighed. “Iya, if I trained for a hundred years at the Crystal Tower, and another hundred at the Arcane University, I still couldn’t think up an argument you wouldn’t tear down in five seconds.”  
  
“Yes, but not because I’m a genius, or because you’re wrong.” Ire loosened his arms and shifted closer, though his gaze was still lost on the dark ground below. “Only because my brain rigs the results, so there’s no way for you to convince me. But… I’m not asking you to, it’s not fair. I said I’d stop dismissing your feelings, and I will, I’m just trying to explain why it’s so hard for me.”  
  
He spent a few more seconds staring at shadows, and the dim shapes of his own hands against them. Then he looked up, eyes bright. “No more explaining or arguing, tonight, I’m sick of it. Honestly, fuck all that logical shit. Arguments are overrated. You don’t need words to tear  _me_  down in five seconds.”  
  
“No?” Julan had seen the germ of Ire’s smile, had taken the hint, but was hesitant, unwilling to risk a mistake.  
  
Ire could have kept him poised on the edge of permission, could have basked in that look on his face indefinitely, but they were past idle flirtation, and he had no strength to tease. “No,” he said, bringing his hand to Julan’s jaw, “no, just kiss me.”  
  
  
A ripple of refined laughter preceded several Dunmer approaching through the dusk, their robes marking them as junior acolytes of Master Neloth. Julan, alone by the tavern wall, nodded to them, his arm tightening around empty air.  
  
“When we get home,” whispered a passing wraith, as a small, localised breeze brushed his lips.  
  
  
  
Inside the tavern, it was remarkably quiet, for the time of night. The few patrons were huddled around scattered tables, and even the normally garrulous bar-staff avoided eye contact. All this was a relief to Iriel, as it helped him avoid inadvertent, crowd-induced chameleon spells. He loitered in a pool of shade between the candles, trying to recall exactly what Bodu had said, when he handed him the note.  
  
 _You know how you wanted to apologise to me the other day? Well, I got this friend I gotta apologise to as well. I wanna do it while I still can, yeah?  
  
_ Julan was at the bar, exchanging a winning smile (and whatever actual gold he still had in his pockets) for a mazte and a shein. Ire waited till he saw him heading over, then pushed open the door to the next room.  
  
 _It’s like… we all make mistakes, y'know buddy? I broke the first rule, when I skipped out on Cel in Tel Mora. I gotta make up for that, now. You gotta make up for stuff. Even when it’s hard._  
  
Inside stood two Ordinators, stiff as statues against the opposite wall, their hard, gold eyes locking onto him.  
  
 _Just go into the back room of Fara’s, yeah? You’ll know who the note’s for when you get there._  
  
“Iriel of Lillandril? We arrest you in the name of the Tribunal on a charge of grand heresy. Submit yourself to the mercy and justice of the Three.” Behind him, he heard more heavy boots moving into position, and the door slamming shut.  
  
 _You won’t forget, will ya? It’s important I tell him tonight, ‘cause he’s gotta leave town in a hurry. I’ll be real sad to see him go. He did right by me, yeah? But we all gotta do what we gotta do._  
  
Mechanically, Iriel broke the seal on the note and looked down. Two words, scrawled large: “SORRY PAL.” Followed by a little frowning face.


	172. do

A shout, and a shattering, like a skull exploding, but only mazte and ceramic shards fell from the Ordinator’s helmet. A shein bottle followed, but went wide and hit the wall, as the guards beside the door surged inwards. Glass meeting metal. Ebony meeting cloth, flesh, bone. The sounds such collisions drove from a throat.  
  
Iriel heard it, but couldn’t look up. His spine was a rusted pipe.

His eyes were still fixed sightlessly on the note in his hands when gauntlets gripped his wrists and pinned them together. Another guard approached with a set of chained metal bracers, shimmering with enchantment.  
  
A needless formality. He was a lost automaton, that had wandered away on its own, and spent a little while staggering in circles, getting itself lost, or stuck in mud. Now its masters had found it, and, depowering it with a flick of a switch, would cart its scrap-metal shell back where it belonged.  
  
A hoarse yelp echoed from inside the helm of Iriel’s captor, and he wheeled round, raising his shield. A moment later, Ire was shoulder-barged aside, bruised from his robotic reverie into the reality of his own softness. Having failed to move far enough, he was then shoved in the chest and sent staggering back.  
  
“Get out, n'wah scum!” Julan spat after him. “As Nerevarine, I will drive all such as you from our land!” His left arm hung awkward and bloodstained, but the other still gripped his sword. As two more guards bore down on him, he shot Ire a last, desperate look. “Go!”  
  
Iriel stood and waited quietly, as the Ordinator with the bracers trotted over to secure him. When the soul-draining effects took hold, he felt no different from before, no worse than he had in weeks. In the background, the other three guards, almost casually, pounded Julan into a crumpled heap on the floor, their gloriously armoured fists and feet moving in well-trained synchronisation.  
  
At length, they decided enough was enough, and two of them hauled him up between them. One of them said, doubtfully: “Commander? Only the Altmer on the warrant, wasn’t it, ser?”  
  
The Dunmer he was addressing gave a sharp nod of his metal head. “Nothing in the tip-off about that one, we were told the heretic would be alone. If the Ashlander’s subdued, throw him out the back.”  
  
The Ashlander, it turned out, was restrained, but not quite subdued. As the Ordinators dragged him towards the door, he spat blood, and bellowed with all the force he could muster: “I AM INDORIL NEREVAR REBORN, YOU S'WITS! HOW COULD AN N'WAH BE THE INCARNATE? HOW DARE YOU MOCK ME!”  
  
He achieved his purpose: they hesitated. Glanced uneasily through their metal eyeholes at each other’s blank, golden faces. “You don’t think,” suggested one, “there’s been a mistake?”  
  
“I do question how an Altmer could be involved in a heresy of this local a nature.”  
  
“Commander, awaiting your order.”  
  
The Ordinator with the most enamel on his breastplate turned to face Iriel. “Speak, n'wah. Identify yourse….”  
  
Eyes on him, all the eyes, _metal eyes, ash of bone for eye of blood, eyes eyes eyes…_  
  
“…VARINE, CHAMPION OF AZURA, COME TO PUNISH YOUR FALSE GODS FOR THEIR ARROGANCE AND PRI–UGGGH!! …ggthh…”  
  
Eyes, waiting, asking questions that emptied him of everything and then demanded it back, and you had to give them what they wanted, even if every answer was wrong, even if what they really wanted was your pain, it was still quicker this way, quicker, and he nodded, shook his head, nodded again, and the numb  _void_ began in his  _pinned wr_ ists, spreading  _out into_  his…  _into… m…_  
  
“…nlikely to be involved, but we must follow procedu… … …ake them both in for questioning and see what w…”  
  
Eve _ryt_ hing di _sintegrating… i… to… skinless air… metal crumbling into flakes of rust… dead ash… a brittle shell without a ghost… an echo, melting into silence…_  
  
Julan braced his legs and with a yell, threw all his weight sideways into one of his captors. Rather than freedom, all he gained was a kick in the stomach, but for a moment, no-one was looking at Iriel.  
  
 _…the centre… cannot hold…  will fall apart… like a stone that recalls… it is really water…_  
  
Now, again, Iriel fell. He fell to his knees. He fell through the bracers, and the grip of the guard. He fell to the floor, and then he kept  _falling. Dark_ ness,  _light again, endless,_ weight _less_ the room con _tracting into a distant star_  as he sank i _nto dark_  water, became dark water,  _dissolving–_  
  
until finally–  
  
–nothing at all.  
  
not even time, until–  
  
–very slowly, the room floated up around him again, congealing into view.  
  
  
Sideways, in low, half-focus, Iriel watched two Ordinators dragging Julan through the door. His body sagged limp, but they’d put the bracers on him anyway. His breathing was fitful and shallow.  
  
“Commander!” The remaining Ordinator approached his superior and stood to attention. “Ready to depart, on your order.”  
  
The commander scanned the room. His gaze passed straight through Iriel without snagging. “All clear, Watchman.” He consulted a scroll in his hand, then stowed it into a container on his belt. “I’ll have the skin of the scribe who listed that fetcher as an Altmer from Lillandril. No doubt confused it with a tax record for some alchemist in Ebonheart, the wastrels. Praise the Three the location was right, and we got the heretic regardless.” He turned. “Move out!”  
  
The other guard saluted. Just before he followed his superior from the room, he paused, and glanced back. His hand twitched in uncertainty. Then he shook his head and was gone.  
  
Iriel was alone on a bloody floor in an empty room, the only part of his brain functioning a part that had begun repeating:  _there was a test and you failed_.  
  
  
For a long time, he heard only that voice, and the distant noises of the bar, increasing in volume now the Ordinators were gone. Ire curled his fingers against the mycoprotein beneath him, and waited.  
  
  
Finally, another voice crawled back to him. Wounded, but dragging itself up the steps from the basement.  
  
 _…no_ … it said.  _…No._  
  
It was a start.  
  
Iriel got up off the floor, because it was something he could do.  
  
He walked home. He walked there in a straight line, through all intervening objects. That was something he could do, as well. He walked into the cornerclub without encountering the slightest resistance.  
  
He stood, silently, in front of Bodu, until the Orc passed from issuing terrified threats down a crossbow barrel into howling sobs.  
  
By the time Helende had put the pieces together, Iriel was walking towards the front door again. She stood in front of it. “Where are you going?”

He took a step forwards.  
  
“Iriel!”  
  
Another step forwards.  
  
“Iriel of Lillandril, if you  _walk through me_ , I will never forgive you the invasion of privacy.”  
  
He stopped.  
  
“I have to go,” he stated flatly.  
  
“And do what?!”  
  
His face was immobile. “What I can.”  
  
Helende glanced behind her. Celegorn was holding a screaming Shani away from Bodu’s throat by her braids. “I’ll have to expel him,” she said, hopelessly. “There’s no other option.”  
  
Iriel blinked slowly. “Why?”  
  
“He betrayed the Guild!”  
  
“Cel will leave with him.”  
  
She nodded. Her eyes were bleak and frantic. “It’s all falling apart. The Tong didn’t even need to breach the walls.”  
  
“Then hold it together,” Ire told her. “Forgive him. Tell him I forgive him. Tell him I still understand.”   
  
He regained enough solidity to shoulder past her. “Like the Dren mission, if I’m gone more than a week, don’t wait.”  
  
“You don’t even have your bag!”  
  
“Nothing here I need.”  
  
Ire paused. He looked past Helende, and caught sight of Muriel, on the stairs. A spark of something seized his expression, and he raised his left hand to her, empty and open.  
  
“Thank you for the warmth of your altar-fire, Em!” he called solemnly up to her. “For letting me through the secret door, into your House of Boet-hi-Ah’s Pillow Book. I wish I could protect it, but I act with black hands, now. Sithis is the start of all true Houses, therefore say no elegies for the melting stone!”  
  
He walked out through the closed door. The anti-illusion traps never even flickered.  
  



	173. pure

On the edge of the holiest canton of the holy city of Vivec, there was a small plaza. To the north of it lay the slums of St Delyn; to the south, the steps to the Divine Palace.  To the east rose the solemn arches of the High Fane, dark against the dawn; to the west unrolled the gently rippling sea. Above it, suspended on faith alone, hung a huge, hollow stone, a threat and a promise both.  
  
Shortly after morning prayers, Viatrix Petilia strutted along the path from the High Fane. As she approached the empty plaza, her strut began to falter. By the time she had passed beneath the statue of Vivec and reached the bench on the seaward side, sorrow and weariness showed in every step. She slumped down, neglecting even to arrange the skirts of her robe beneath her as she did so. She let out a long, shaky breath, then slowly drew in a more measured one. She closed her eyes.  
  
A small voice, very close nearby, said, “Um.”

Her eyes flew open. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”  
  
“I can’t,” said the voice. She cast about her, but no one was there. “Are you a spirit?” she asked, determined to sound matter-of-fact about the prospect. “I am shielded by the Light of the Three!” She had accepted that she would never be able to commune with her ancestors, in the way that the Dunmeri faithful did, but if she couldn’t do it properly, she’d rather not do it at all. Really, if any of her dead Imperial relatives dared present themselves to her, she would consider it the height of incivility.  
  
“I’m not a spirit,” said the voice. “At least… I hope not. But you are… sort of… sitting on me. Or rather… through me. Sorry. It’s my own fault.”  
  
She sprang up with a gasp, but on spinning around, she still couldn’t see anyone. For a moment, her face was adrift in confusion, then it recomposed itself. She must have stood up because she was leaving. She smoothed her attire and turned back towards the Temple compound.   
  
“Viatrix!”  
  
She squeaked, swivelled and squinted through the shadow of the colossal rock above them. She saw the core of the figure before she made out its edges, it being hard to tell where they ended, and the bench began. The elf was lying on it, clothes a vague jumble of brown and grey, its face an upturned, goldish smear. As details emerged, Viatrix’s features clenched and relaxed through a number of near-misses at recognition, until she finally said: “I…riel?”  
  
The bench-dweller extended a hand, and moved it back and forth in front of its face for a while. “That was it,” he said, finally.  
  
  
“So this is why you never answered my letters.”  
  
He had shifted upright, so they could sit together in a less intimate fashion. “Sorry. I’ve been… I’ve… been?” He wrinkled his nose. “Possibly?”  
  
“You look…” She blinked, then frowned. “I’m not certain. You’re extremely difficult to look at.”  
  
“I know. Sorry.”  
“Iriel, what are you  _doing_  here?”  
“Bearing witness to suffering.”  
She followed his upward gaze. “To…?”  
“Julan’s in there.”  
  
“Oh.” She grimaced. “I see.” She buried her hands in the folds of her robe, and leaned over them. “You might not believe this, but… I know how you feel. A friend of mine was arrested recently, too. Perhaps you’ve already heard, since you were acquainted with her - Mehra Milo.”  
  
With slow breaths, she slowly straightened her back, though her eyes remained fixed on her lap. “I say ‘friend’, but in truth, we weren’t close. She probably barely remembers me, among all the people she sees ever day. I really don’t understand why it’s affected me so deeply.”  
  
Something fragile had entered her voice and, conscious of it, she tried intensifying her haughty reserve, to cover it. It only added a stilted awkwardness to her distress. “Perhaps it’s the symbolism, perhaps I’m simply afraid for myself. That if someone so  _clearly_  virtuous and dedicated could be accused, then none of us are safe.”  
  
She turned to him, sudden emotion bright in her cheeks. “I hoped you might know something! I even, irrationally, kept wondering if this was somehow your fault! After all, you asked about her, you wanted to discuss something secret with her! I know that’s ridiculous, but I simply– What is  _happening?_  She… she was a  _librarian!_  How could they imagine she, of all people…!”  
  
A catch in her voice brought her to an embarrassed halt, and when she resumed, it was to forge determinedly in a new direction entirely. “Are you quite all right, lying here? You’re not some kind of vagrant, are you? How long do you mean to continue this?”  
  
“Every so often,” Ire said vacantly, “I try falling into the Pit. And each time, there’s nothing there. I lie on the bottom and wait, but it’s empty. I don’t know where it all went. I thought there would at least be the guilt, but… nothing.” He gazed upwards, eyes unblinking. “I suppose even self-hatred requires a self.”  
  
She had bowed her head again, dark curls obscuring her face. “Since they arrested her, I haven’t been able to sleep. I barely eat. I still perform my duties. I attend prayers, and I repeat the words, but… sometimes I don’t know what they mean, any more.”  
  
Ire didn’t move. “I’m not sure when I last ate,” he said. “I don’t get hungry, and it’s hard to remind myself. I’m not even sure I need to. I think I’ve probably been sleeping, but… it’s stopped mattering where I do it. I don’t feel cold, and the rain barely touches me. Nobody sees me, unless I really try. The trouble is, I fall through things, when I sleep. This bench is… easier to be solid on, than other places.”  
  
He was still staring up at the rock. “I hoped… I would be able to do more than just bear witness. But it’s full of guards, and I shut down.” A furrow appeared in his forehead. “I’m still afraid of them, even when I know they can’t see me. As if my fear, denied its usual place in my head… instead of shrinking, it only moved, and forced the rest of me to contract smaller. What if I was never even afraid of people? What if I’m not afraid of anything specific, I just have this great, useless fear, living inside me like a parasite, latching on to whatever it can get?” He frowned harder, then all at once, his face slackened again. “I’ve tried going in, but nothing changes. Everything goes blank, and I wake up back down here.”  
  
“Guards? Do you mean the Ordinators?“ She scoffed. "I can deal with Ordinators. Most of them obey orders without thinking, if you approach them correctly. But… you can’t mean you got  _inside?_ That’s ridiculous.” She stared at him, or tried to, but her gaze kept slipping off the shifting translucencies of his form, and the certainty left her tone. “You need full authorisation at the door, and they check every glyph is not just valid, but enchanted with the personal sigil-seal of the Patriarch. Any other entrance is completely impregnable from the outside.”  
  
“Not to me.” Iriel was alert now, eyes flashing hope and suspicion. “If I got you in, you’d do it? You’d break her out? You, a devotee of the Tribunal? If they caught you, you’d lose everything. You’d throw it all away for her?”  
  
“I would.” She spoke without hesitation, then her eyes widened, as if she had stunned herself by saying it out loud, and making it real. She blinked a few times, hands clenching in her lap, then continued, more carefully. “She’s the sort of priestess… the sort of  _person_ I always wanted to be. She has the same look that I saw in the statue of Almalexia, that first called me to becomea devotee of the Tribunal. Someone filled with such goodness, that you could never put a foot wrong your entire life, and you would still feel like a criminal, the first moment she laid her eyes on you. Not because she judges you, quite the opposite! She’s the soul of kindness. I once thought she was going to cry, because she couldn’t find me the right colour of sealing wax! Her voice is soft, her eyes are soft, everything about her is so soft. She makes me feel I’m nothing but points and edges.”  
  
“Sounds like she makes you feel a lot of things.”  
  
She bristled at him. “It’s not like that! Don’t be so… so  _vulgar_.”  
  
Iriel tipped his head back. Then he declaimed, in a blandly ironic voice: “The citizens of Vivec screamed as they saw a shooting star come down out of the sky hole like a toll-road of hell. But Vivec merely raised his hand and froze Lie Rock above the city, and then he pierced the monster with Muatra.” She could just make out a smirk on his lips, as he added, “The practice of piercing the Second Aperture is now forbidden.”  
  
He exhaled, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Before you get too impressed, I don’t have the entire Sermons memorised. But this one is written on a plaque over there, due to its local relevance.”  
  
Viatrix gave a sharp huff. “Many things are forbidden, often for good reasons.” She rolled her eyes, until they collided with the hovering stone and plummeted quickly downwards. “What’s your  _point_ , Iriel?”  
  
“I’m just wondering. Is it forbidden in the same way that  _spear biting_  is forbidden? Is it forbidden to the Buoyant Armigers? One I spoke to once implied otherwise.”  
  
“The Armigers are  _special_. They undergo ordeals and initiations, to prepare them for the holy tasks they must perform, therefore they are exempt from certain… restrictions. The same is true for many of the higher clergy. It’s all quite sanctioned and regulated, Iriel, do stop making that  _face_.”  
  
“Forbidden to some, but not to you. Do as I say, but not as I do. It’s all so convenient.”  
  
“These are sacred mysteries. You couldn’t possibly understand. I don’t claim to understand everything myself, but I  _obey_ , out of  _faith_.”  
  
His shoulder twitched. “It’s true, I don’t understand sacred mysteries. But I understand you have a terrible crush on Mehra Milo.”  
  
“I do  _not_ , how dare you!” She was flushed with anger. “Don’t cheapen our… my…”  
  
“…love?”  
  
She scoured him with her glare. “Yes! But it’s not what  _you’re_  thinking of at all. My love is  _pure_.”  
  
“Unlike mine?” His words were bladed, and Viatrix’ mouth snapped closed into a tight, strained line.  
  
“Piercing the Second Aperture is forbidden,” he intoned. “Such filthy, horrible things these perverts do. Not like you, of course, all pure. You’d never dream of piercing  _anything_  of hers.”  
  
She was in agony. “Stop it!”  
  
He gave her a pity-drenched look. “Oh, Vi. I really don’t care if you want to pierce her or not. But don’t sit there in your hallowed fucking apparel, telling me your love is purer than mine.”  
  
She held his gaze, but her eyes were chastened, and as close as she’d get to apology. He knew it, and nodded, imperceptibly. She set her jaw, and got to her feet in a sweep of skirts. “If you dare, I dare. I have intervention scrolls to Ebonheart, and contacts there who can help us. If you can get me inside, I’ll do the rest.”  
  
He stood to join her immediately. “Can you get up there? Do you have potions? Gravity has sort of… stopped caring about me lately, but I don’t think I could levitate you.”  
  
“Through the power,” she said smugly, “of faith.”  
  
She led him to a painted triolith on the south side of the plaza. It was a Tribunal shrine, like the one she had prayed to, inside the Ghostfence. Rather then soul gems, this one was bedecked with coda flowers, their white buds furled like supplicants’ hands.  
  
Viatrix pressed her hands together, too, as she turned to face Iriel. “You quote Lord Vivec so casually, but truly, you do not understand. You think the Ministry of Truth is a symbol of oppression and hypocrisy, and I quite appreciate why, but please allow me to explain something.”  
  
She raised her hand, poised as a painted icon. “This moon is supported by faith, which is to say, by love. By the binding love, forged between Vivec and Their people. A constant reminder that Their love for us is fuelled and sustained by our love for Them, in eternal communion and exchange. A reminder that our faith is unique in the world, for its mutuality of love and trust. This is what drew me to Almsivi. This divine relationship I could find nowhere else.”  
  
Her hands were clasped again, her expression yearning. “When Vivec ascended to godhood, They could have become like the Aedra, eternally celestial, but forever beyond our reach. Vivec could have ascended still higher, beyond the Mundus, but They chose not to. They knew that Their followers would need help, before we could follow, and so They remained, in order to show us how. Everything They do, They do to teach us, and They do it from purest love.”  
  
Iriel peered down at her rapturous expression, lip sceptically curled. “Even screwing Molag Bal?”  
  
She didn’t flinch. “Some things They did, so we might not have to. So we might receive the lesson, without paying the cost. Not all are fit to bear such things. And yet, to chance one’s own destruction for a worthy reward is a holy act. Daring is one of the Seven Graces, too.” She lifted her chin. “Are you ready?” He nodded.  
  
She knelt before the shrine, and closed her eyes. “Thank you for your daring, Lord Vivec. I shall not shun risk, nor hide behind the mask of cautious counsel, for fortune favours the bold.”  
  
Nothing instantaneous happened, and in the intervening silence, Iriel asked: “So you’ve told her how you feel, then?”  
  
Viatrix’ eyes flew open. “No!!! And I  _won’t_ , it’s irrelevant!” Her tone softened with shame. “I may not be pure, but she is.”  
  
“I bet she’s not, you know.” He loitered beside the shrine, hands deep in the pockets of his filthy linen pants. “What do you even mean, pure? Pure’s just a pompous way to say you lack things. Which, despite what people tell you, is a morally neutral state, no better or worse than anyone else.”   
  
He scowled, features sharpening briefly into irritated focus. “Fuck purity. I’ve been far too pure, lately. I’m so pure there’s barely anything left. I’m lacking almost everything, and far from being noble, it’s dull as dust. You’re not pure, Vi, you’re much more interesting than that. And you may not be soft, but you’re strong and sharp as a diamond. So is your love.”  
  
Stubbornly ignoring him, she touched the shrine, and whispered to it: “Love is under Your will only.”  
  
His bare feet scuffed into her field of view. “ _Your_ will, Vi.”  
  
She turned her face up to him, open and sincere. “My will is Their will.”  
  
He looked at her oddly. “Then… surely we’re both right?”  
  
Magic flowed into her from the triolith. She took his extended hand, and they rose into the air.


	174. give

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: embracing the void! Nothing new for this fic (and final proof that the title was never a metaphor!) but I mention it because sometimes I worry that Iriel’s flirtation with nothingness (or its, uh, consummation, in this case) could encourage suicidal ideation, if you’re in that sort of place to begin with. Which: please don’t embrace the void. It's not a healthy relationship.

Melting through the surface of the rogue moon was easy. Tripping the heavy mechanisms on the inner side was hard. Every physical action seemed to cost Iriel more energy than the last.  
  
Viatrix tumbled through the delivery hatch into the empty storage chamber, bounced to her feet and brushed herself down. Ire slipped into the next room, checked for guards, then slid aside the bolts on the door for her. She jumped, when he whispered that it was unlocked, face stiffening in shock, like she’d heard a ghost.

They crept downwards through the curving tunnels, eaten into the core of the rock by Temple kwamadrivers. Viatrix kept trying to proceed before he’d confirmed it was safe, then stifling squeaks when he solidified enough to catch her arm. Each time, it took more force to get through to her, to remind her she wasn’t alone. The problem was, it was mutual. Despite the danger, Iriel found his concentration wavering, his surroundings growing distant, as he retreated further into his own head.  
  
_I was always trading something away. Illusion or Alteration, there is still always a calculus for energy given, and lost. It isn’t just spells. Everything is energy, this reality was torn and shaped from raw Aetherial magic, long ago. All action is transaction, the conversion of energy from one form to another. Our bodies are just borrowed energy. You can give it back, if you know how. If you’ve run out of everything else._  
  
_Give me a tear from out thine eye, no more shalt thou need sorrow._  
_And give it to the rav'nous flame, and I’ll be thine tomorrow._  
  
_But I have no tears left to give, and even the Pit is empty. So much of me is burned and spent, not even ashes remaining. I warned you, love. I told you how little flesh there was left on my bones, each time you raised me from the dead._  
  
_I can’t help but wonder… had the spell succeeded, and she regained him… would he have looked at her soot-smeared figure, hair shorn, skin torn, and said: but you are nothing like my true love. You are a stranger to me. How many parts can be removed, before the essence of a thing is destroyed? They say every cell in your body is lost and replaced, within a given span of years. What if you forgot how to replace them?_  
  
“Ini… no. Iriel? Are you there?” Viatrix hissed it under her breath. She sounded dubious, but it was enough to reattach his thoughts to the Ministry, and the steel-banded door she was facing.  
  
“I’m here,” he said, startling her yet again.  
  
“This is the Grand Inquisitor’s office,” she whispered. “There will be keys to the Prison Keep and the cells in here.” She froze, as boots echoed along the torchlit rock tunnel behind her, too late to evade. “And a prisoner record. You get keys and cell numbers, and I’ll deal with this.”  
  
Iriel slipped through the reinforced door as Viatrix marched up to the approaching Ordinator, her boots striking the stone twice as loud as his. A moment later, Ire heard: “Is that you, Fadren?” and the young Dunmer audibly flinching, as he replied: “Adept Petilia? What are you–”  
  
“Fadren! I’m so glad to find someone _reasonable_ , at last! You would not _believe_ the number of times I have been harassed, and groped, simply in pursuit of my duties! I almost thought they were going to _strip_ -search me, at one point!”  
  
“Ai, my… my apologies, Adept, but we must follow procedure–”  
  
“I _quite_ understand the need for security, but really, I’ve _never_ been so humiliated! Do they think I _want_ to be here? And _nobody_ will help me find the Chief Processor, and I have _extremely_ urgent business.”  
  
Fadren pretended to clear his throat, evidently needing time to prepare, before opposing Viatrix. “The Chief Processor is in the Prison Block,” he finally said, almost firmly. “Regrettably, that’s off-limits to all but–”  
  
“I see. In that case, there’s no other option, you’ll have to take a message for me. Now, Fadren, this is absolutely confidential. May I entrust you with this information, in the full assurance you will not babble it around, and cause a panic?”  
  
“Of… of course, Adept!”  
  
“Inform her we’ve had an Ordinator come down with corprus, and believe a prisoner he escorted here recently may be the source of the infection. I have my testing apparatus with me, but if I cannot be permitted into the cells, then the Chief Processor needs to assign someone _immediately_ to carry out these tests on my behalf.”  
  
“Mother of Mercy preserve us! What… what manner of tests must be done?”  
  
“I will need blood samples, and fluids collected from all open sores on the skin. I was allowed to bring no scrolls, potions or enchanted items through the visitor screening procedure, so I hope whoever collects the samples is able to cast powerful anti-disease spells. We still can’t be sure any are truly effective, but…” Her voice became brittle and bright. “Surely Almsivi will protect him, in this most holy of duties. But the Processor must assign someone immediately upon receiving this message. Do you understand, Fadren? I would do it myself, being trained for it, but I _completely_ appreciate that you have to follow procedure.”  
  
There was a pause, as Fadren engaged in some processing of his own. He swallowed. “If… if I were to let you into the cell block through the lower entrance, perhaps the tests could be carried out faster, and more… thoroughly, without the need to disturb the Processor. But you must not mention to anyone that I…”  
  
“Of course, Fadren, of course! I will not breathe a word. Fadren Dalis, wasn’t it? I knew you were a devoted man when you served in my Order of Purification last Evening Star. How is your younger sister? Still apprenticed to the kresh-weavers, in St Olms?”  
  
Iriel drifted after, grateful she’d found a better tool. Despite several attempts, he’d been unable to pick up the keys, his fingers glitching through the iron, not even casting a shadow from the candles on the enormous desk.  
  
_Perhaps I was only ever an illusion. A trick of the light, reflecting an image to others of whatever they wanted to see. But it had no real usefulness. No depth, no substance. Visible from one angle only. Turn your head, and I disappear._  
  
Viatrix and her pet Ordinator breezed past the guards posted at the lower entrance to the Prison Block. “I’ll remain here,” Fadren said, as he unlocked another heavy door. “To ensure you can, um. Concentrate on your work. These are the isolation cells, for heretics. No one should trouble you until the next round of Admonition, but you must work swiftly. If the Chief Processor were to…”  
  
“I’ll be no time at all. Thank you, Fadren. Almsivi watch over you.” She took the bunch of keys he handed her, and trotted through the door into the darkness beyond.  
  
Ire tried to follow, but gravity was losing interest in him again, and the presence of so many guards was overwhelming. His vision, which had been blurring for a while now, dimmed still further. The stone around him swam, then slowly began dropping away.  
  
It didn’t matter, he thought. She was inside, he could trust her to do the rest. He knew, unlike Fadren, that Viatrix had not followed procedure when she entered. She had been neither scanned nor searched for enchanted items, and her scrolls of Divine Intervention were still in her robe, ready to teleport Julan, Mehra and herself to Ebonheart. There was one for him, too, but… more and more, he knew he didn’t have enough physical connection left to use it.  
  
_I had it the wrong way round, wondering if the Aurbis is an illusion I’m experiencing via inconsistent, unreliable sensation. The Aurbis is very real. I am the inconsistent sensation it’s been experiencing, and now it’s on the verge of going numb._  
  
He had done what he could. Exhausted, he surrendered his mental grip on the Ministry, untied the last thread. He fell faster. Torchlit rooms slid past in a haze of alternating darkness and light. He didn’t struggle. Barely even noticed he was falling up, rather than down. His limbs were distant stars, lost civilisations with dust on their tongues.  
  
In the Aetherial mindscape, he sensed one scroll activate. A little later, he felt another burst of mystic energy, sucking a soul and its attendant body away to safety. He expected the third to follow immediately, but it didn’t come.  _I hope no one’s waiting for me._  
  
Then a magical stutter, a spell initiating then failing, the last syllable torn off. Dimly, he heard a scream.  
  
_Shit! No…!_  
  
It was too late to act, he was too far gone. Something of his body must exist, but he no longer remembered how it worked, what its functions were, where he’d even left it. He had lost his way, somewhere in the swampy fringes of his mind, lost the stairs back to his skin.  
  
_What can I–?_  
  
He had something. Not much, perhaps, but something. However locked-off and useless most of him was, he was energy, in whatever form. And what he couldn’t find or use, he could still spend. _It’s all in your head, Iriel._  
  
He reached out. Reached inwards. Channelling, focusing, Iriel concentrated his available ingredients, one last time, into a solution. He refined it. Purified it, converted it into something better. He pulled himself together, and made himself useful.  
  
He hurled it through the aether - the last syllable of the spell.  
  
_…was it… enough?_  
  
He felt the magic activate as the teleportation circuit was completed, felt the soul it carried snap out of space and vanish, to emerge at its destination.  
  
And then… nothing.  
  
Silence.  
  
White emptiness.  
  
Complete isolation.  
  
Numbness beyond all memory of sensation.  
  
_…how much… did I give?_  
  
A burst of light. Not Aetherius… not quite. The sun, above Vivec city, above the clouds, cantons and sea lost in mist below him.  
  
He floated, wisp-like. Surrounded by nothing, connected to nothing, with nothing to maintain the distinction. It wasn’t enough. The dissipated remainder of Iriel’s form couldn’t hold itself together. Little by little, it began to drift apart.  
  
_…unfold the whole, and what you have is…_  
  
There was a brief moment of terror. But fear is such a physical thing. Soon, there was only peace, and quiet inevitability.  
  
_my path was always leading me here_  
  
_was there a moment i could have escaped it, some route that I missed?_  
  
_when did i miss it?_  
  
_when i drank invisibility in talos plaza? when i let myself be forgotten in firi’s library? when i spent six hours in the laundry basket as a toddler? but it’s always been like this. so much safer, hidden away. easier, easier for everyone. why did they always keep dragging me back under their gaze?_  
  
_i wish you could have seen me, one last time, but that’s selfish. you’re free, and in my way, so am i. it’s enough. i had enough, was enough. what would i give for you? everything, nothing, there’s no difference, now_  
  
_give me the love from out thy heart, no more shalt thou…_  
  
It was a relief. Like escaping a burning building, or a blinding light. Like releasing a breath he’d spent his life holding.  
  
_and give it to the rav'nous void_  
  
_…and i_  
  
_i’ve given all i can_  
  
Shedding senses like leaves, discarding his remaining fragments, cell by cell, Iriel let himself go.


	175. martyr

Julan Kaushibael knew he’d finally lost his mind when he saw a spindle-limbed ash-monster with a hole for a face, squatting before him in the darkness. As he watched, it began pulling the fingers off its own hand, one by one, like a child with flower petals.  
  
_sen dar-kausi, first for ghost_  
_gul'dar-hlarmut, second for guest_  
  
It popped a finger into its face-hole, and did something that was only made worse by its slight similarity to chewing. It was already gripping another finger and tearing it free.  
  
_get dar-tushpi, third for wisdom_  
_hish'dar-musa, fourth for glory_  
  
The next finger halfway to its not-mouth, the creature paused. Held the finger out to Julan, with a nod of invitation. He drew back, whimpering, clenching his teeth against a scream.

He knew he was mad, because he could see it, and it wasn’t real. He knew it wasn’t real, because he could see it, despite the total darkness of the isolation cell, and because closing his eyes changed nothing. He thought he was closing his eyes, anyway. He had tried to maintain his grip on the difference, holding them open until he could feel them sting, feel the tears run down his cheeks.   
  
He shook his head at the ash monster. It shrugged and sucked in the finger with a soft “shloop”. He was trying to be polite to them, since neither hurling abuse nor ignoring them seemed to help. Perhaps this was what they’d meant, when they’d told him the isolation cells would begin the process of breaking him.  
  
He tried to track time. Tried not to bite his nails, so he’d be able to tell when they grew longer, quickly failed. Tried to gauge days by his hunger level, but he’d been bad at that from childhood, always convinced it had been far longer than Mother said it had. The metal hatch in the base of the door gave him water, rarely, but food, never yet. More often, it only clanged loudly, as if kicked, jerking him from all but the briefest of lapses into sleep.  
  
Interrogation would be next. How soon, he didn’t know, just as he didn’t know how many days he had been in the dark. This was part of the breaking, not knowing. Imagining what they might do, to break him fully, break everything in him wide open.  
  
With his left hand, the one that wasn’t chained to the wall, he pinched a soft piece of flesh in his neck. Jammed his ragged nails in, until they got slick with blood.  _It’s just pain. You can handle pain. They can’t make you tell them anything._  
  
_They can, and they will._  
  
He’d been questioned, briefly, on arrival. No professionals, just a guard shouting things at him, with the occasional slap, to aid concentration. “Who trained you, who helped you?” they’d demanded. “You expect us to believe you were acting alone?” Of course, he’d nodded. He’d been bracing himself for them to mention Iriel, but they never had. As if they didn’t know, as if they hadn’t caught him. Had they caught him? Or had he escaped? Surely either possibility meant they’d want to ask him things. Were they trying to confuse him, get him to make a mistake? If so, he couldn’t follow their logic. Perhaps they were saving it for the interrogation? Unless–  
  
All his life, he’d hated the way he could never seem to follow a line of thought to its end, without something breaking it off. Doubt, stupidity, confusion. Lack of faith, that was Mother’s favourite. Call it what you want, it muddied the water, stirred up old feelings until his mind was nothing but a chaotic whirlpool of shit, and he’d tap out, cut it off, get outside, find a distraction. Well, not today. He had nowhere to go but back into the chaos, until he began to doubt even the most basic things.  
  
_Who are you?_  
  
They’d kept asking him, and he’d kept telling them ‘Indoril Nerevar’, for simplicity’s sake, but now, in the dark, he almost wished he’d given them his name. For safekeeping.  
  
_When will you stop believing what other people tell you about yourself?_  
  
_Well, who else is going to tell me??_  
  
_savage, scum, ash-licking guarfucker_  
  
Around others, he could be someone. Relate, react, respond to what they needed. Who they needed.  
  
_haishan, vassith_  
  
Alone, he was like water without a vessel. All shapeless, swirling energy and no form or direction.  
  
_What if there’s nothing? What if all my memories are wrong? What if I’m mad, or dead, or dreaming, what if nothing is real, there’s only the darkness, and nobody else is real either, and nothing is true, and–SHUT UP!!_  
  
_How do they know what’s true? Even if I break, if I tell them about Mother, or the Guild, or… or anyone, if I said lots of other made up things too, to throw them off, how would they tell which was real? If I said I was Camonna Tong, how would they know–_  
  
_They know, when they break you. That’s the point. You think they don’t know how to do it? You think you’re stronger than any other prisoner they’ve ever had in here?_  
  
He knew, in his heart, how weak he was. In the mind, where it counted, in ways no amount of training could fix. Mother had warned him about it often enough.  _You are thoughtless_ , she’d said.  _You make mistakes. You forget things. You let people deceive you with soft words, but they’ll turn on you, twist you from your destiny, betray your secrets. Your loose tongue will be used against you._  
  
All this, because he’d spent too long (any time was too long) chatting to a lost adventurer needing directions. Or arguing with a missionary, allegedly on principle, but really, just to talk to someone new. He’d told himself she was overreacting. In the end, he knew she was right.   
  
_You think you can stop them breaking you?_  
  
_…I’m not that stupid._  
  
_So die. Now, somehow, before they can get things out of you that would hurt more people. You hoped you could be a hero, and you couldn’t, but you can be strong enough for this. If you can’t make your life worth something, make your death worth something instead._  
  
_Wasn’t that what you wanted, when you left home? Remember those months of dry half-death, like your heart had rotted inside you? Or those days with molten lava in your chest, when you swore at Mother and smashed things over nothing? When you couldn’t even make yourself weep, so you got into fights on purpose, just to get something beaten out of you? Remember it, n'wah. Remember when you ran into Shani that day in Vos, suddenly closer than you’d been to her in a year, and you saw it’d scarred there, along her cheekbone, where she hit the rock as she fell, and you knew there was no forgetting, no healing, she’d wear what you did to her, always. That you can keep telling yourself was an accident, but she knew better, and so should you. You think about that. Think hard about her eyes, and tell me you can’t endure this._  
  
_And if I can’t?_  
  
_Shut up. You wanted this. A failed Incarnate’s fate is honourable, but a martyr’s death is glorious. Executed by the Temple as a heretic, honouring your people to the last. Face your end proudly. Curse them in Azura’s name. No tears, no denials, no begging for–_  
  
_I can’t_  
  
_Never let them see you weaken, shame them with your courage and faith–_  
  
_I can’t do it_  
  
_You have to._  
  
_just play the martyr, julan, always the martyr_  
  
_i can’t i can’t i can’t_  
  
The door burst open, and he flinched back so hard his head cracked against the stone. Torchlight illuminated a small shape, pale face framed by dark curls. “Julan!” He could only gape at her, but she ran forwards and began unlocking his chains. “It’s me, Viatrix, do you remember? We met at Ghostgate. I’m here to rescue you, but we must be quick. Mehra’s already teleported. Here’s your scroll. Read it, and I’ll see you both in Ebonheart.”  
  
“Wait!” He struggled upright, legs like reeds in a storm. “You… but… where’s…?”  
  
“No time!” She pulled him out of the cell, so he could see the scroll in the torchlight. “Go!”  
  
“No, there’s… something I–”  
  
“Julan, there’s nothing and no one! The guards will be here soon, so–”  
  
“My sword!” Mind floundering he’d caught sight of the chest against the wall. He staggered over, and scooped out the contents, the glass longsword first, then, almost as an afterthought, his clothes.  
  
She scurried after. “Stop that, it doesn’t  _matter_ , come  _on!_ ”  
  
He was still hesitating, scanning the other cell doors. “Isn’t there… someone else we should…?”  
  
“No! Mehra’s already gone!” She was reaching into her robe for her own scroll. “I only have enough for us, so–” She paused, hand in her pocket, blinking, then drew out two more rolls of paper. “Oh! Apparently I  _do_  have a spare.”  
  
She ran to a random cell, opened the hatch and threw it towards the occupant, followed by her bunch of keys. “There,” she hissed to Julan. “That’s my Grace of Generosity for the day, and they had better not turn out to be a rapist or a murderer. Now go!”  
  
His head was swimming. “It’s… really OK to go?”  
  
“Yes! I promise you, so  _please!_ ”  
  
He could barely focus, but as he mouthed the words, magic swarmed out of the enchantment and enveloped him, sucked him into the void.  
  
  
Moments caught between seconds. Sensations caught between realities. Fingers in his hair?  
  
  
Slamming down hard onto spotless marble tiles, heels skidding out from under him, crashing into a heap of sword, clothes and exhausted limbs.  
  
As he struggled to pull himself together, he felt hands on his shoulders. “Whoa, there,” a man’s voice said, close by.  
  
“NO!!” He flailed blindly, felt his elbow strike firm muscle beneath soft flesh. “Let go of me, I’ll kill you!!”  
  
“Slow down,” came the voice, warm and steady. “You’re safe now. You’re in the Imperial Chapels at Ebonheart, and there’s no one here intends you any harm. You just sit tight, till the magic ebbs away, then we’ll get you all fixed up with–”  
  
“Don’t touch me!” Julan shuffled backwards, lost in the wave of terror washing over him, trying to get his sword the right way round, cutting his hands on the blade as he yanked it from the scabbard. “Get away from me, n'wah, before I–”  
  
The Redguard man kneeling across from him didn’t move, only smiled, and spread his empty hands. “Sorry to alarm you, friend. Are you hurt, do you need healing? Food?”  
  
“I want  _nothing_  from this Imperial… scum… place of…” Julan trailed off, partly because he had the feeling the sentence wasn’t going to make any more sense, if he kept going, but mostly because the man before him was horribly familiar, and he didn’t know why. He felt hungover, not only because of the groggy, half-reality of everything, but because his memory was riddled with holes.  
  
He swallowed, caught in a wave of unfocused guilt.  _Sheogorath, Julan, what shalk-brained thing did you do this time, that now you can’t remember?_  
  
The Redguard gave the impression he was also struggling with something, behind his eyes. The smile persisted, but the force behind it was gone.  _Kaye_ , Julan realised,  _his name is Kaye_. He repeated it out loud.  
  
“My apologies, friend,” Kaye said slowly, “I don’t seem to recall your name, but…” His smile solidified slightly, gaining a hint of sly triumph. “If I’m mistaken, this is going to sound mighty strange, but… were you a guest at our New Life celebration, this past year?”  
  
Julan’s mouth opened and closed, memories flaring and guttering. “I… was there,” he managed, eventually. His jangled brain began piecing something logical together. “My friend Sottilde made me go with her, we… we danced, and I knocked someone into a drinks table. We didn’t stay long, after that.” He blinked, then frowned. “There were all these… little bits of fruit, in the drinks…” He rubbed his forehead, then met Kaye’s eye. “I think… I think maybe I saw you, heard your name, maybe, but I… don’t think we ever spoke.”  
  
Kaye was nodding. “Must be it, must be it. Now, let’s get you clear of the receiving area, before–”  
  
Viatrix exploded into existence next to them, terror on her face, and hair in disarray. She landed on one heel, teetered precariously, then somehow pirouetted, and regained her balance. “Nine hells!” she exclaimed, “I thought they’d got me! I was on the last word when someone grabbed the scroll, and I thought it had failed! Praise the Three!” her face clouded “…if I still may.” She scanned the area. “Julan, get up. Where’s Mehra?”  
  
“Ah, you’re all together?” Kaye was on his feet. “We took the Dunmer lady straight to our infirmary. She looked in a bad way, but I’m sure with proper care–”  
  
“I daresay, but there’s no time.” Viatrix yanked on Julan’s arm until he was mostly vertical, and within seconds, they were out of the door, Kaye’s confused voice echoing after: “Nine be with you!”  
  
“Keep them,” muttered Julan automatically, as they reeled down the stone corridors towards the infirmary.  
  
Viatrix, fortunately confident of the way, darted him a look. “Save your pride for later,” she said, “We may need all the help we can get.”  
  
  
  
It wasn’t until they were deep into the side-streets of the Ebonheart docks that Julan was allowed to catch his breath. And then only because whoever lived behind the door Viatrix was ferociously hammering on was taking a while to answer. The door’s paint was flaking, and the house barely wider than the door, built in a line with five others. Its one front window was cracked and dark. Julan tried to peer through it, but got nowhere.  
  
“Is this where your family live?” he hazarded, as Viatrix began knocking again, louder still, perched at the top of three tall, precariously narrow stone steps leading up to the entrance.  
  
She snorted. “Of course not! My old nurse lives here. But she must be sleeping.” She hissed through the keyhole: “Blatta!!! It’s me, wake up!!”  
  
“I thought you said we didn’t have time to get Mehra healed.” Julan glanced down to where the librarian sat, her copper-haired head lolling, half-conscious, against the herb planters, her bare feet in the gutter. They’d had to carry her from the Chapels, Viatrix able to bear more of her slight weight than he was, to his shame. At least Viatrix had allowed him ten seconds to change into his real clothes and buckle his sword-belt, so that his hands would be free. Even if she had turned primly to face the wall while he dragged off the filthy prison rags, not to mention glared at him, any time his hands got too close to any part of Mehra’s body she deemed inappropriate, which was most of them. He’d have rolled his eyes, if he had the strength.  
  
“Healed?” Viatrix peered down at him, nose wrinkling. Then she sighed noisily. “Not THAT sort of nurse! My  _nursemaid_ , who looked after me when I was a child.”  
  
“You’re an orphan? I thought–”  
  
“No! Stop being such an  _idiot_ , I–”  
  
The door opened, and a burly human woman in late middle-age appeared, hands on her hips. Her silvering brown hair was cropped short, and she was wearing a patched blue nightshirt. “What… Trixie?” She beamed, but Viatrix stopped her greeting in its tracks. “Blatta, do you remember when you said if ever there was anything you could do to help me, you’d never let me down?”  
  
Blatta’s eyes widened, but she nodded.  
  
“Good,” Viatrix continued, “because we’re going to need your boat. How soon can you be ready to leave?”  
  
Blatta leaned on the doorframe. She ran a hand through her hair, as her gaze took in Julan, then Mehra. “Sweet Mara, Trixie,” she groaned. “What did you do  _this_  time?”


	176. grace

They had sailed all day, all night, and now dawn was breaking over their bows. Viatrix, upright in the stern, missed it. She had spent some time dozing, and some helping Blatta with the practicalities of the small fishing boat. Mostly, though, she had sat facing west, watching herself sail away from Vivec, further with every gust of wind that filled the sails, every wave that slapped against the hull.   
  
 _I have abandoned my faith. Vivec was my teacher. Have I learned nothing from my Lessons?_

Mehra was sleeping close by, her eyelids swollen. She had done little but weep for most of the journey, locked inside a grief Viatrix had no key for.  
  
 _Where is my grief for the god I have betrayed? Am I so unfeeling that I would leave her holy city forever, without even one tear?  
  
_ Viatrix used male pronouns for Vivec with older Temple colleagues, who were likely to be scriptural hardliners, following a masculist tradition of interpreting the Thirty-Six Lessons. She used gender-neutral ones with most others, this being as close as she could get to the subtle and intricate network of pronouns used in the original Dunmeris. In the privacy of her own thoughts, however, Vivec was always feminine.  
  
She still believed she had done the right thing. Viatrix didn’t do regret. She also lacked practice at doubt, but occasionally she allowed herself to doubt whether this was a virtue. Nevertheless: she did not doubt her decision. She only wondered at her own continued self-possession about it.  
  
In the wrenching instant when the Intervention spell had translated her body to Ebonheart, and her soul hung in elastic suspense, ready to follow, she’d felt something. A farewell, or perhaps a blessing. Warm, familiar, and imbued with love, like Vivec’s eyes, during their one meeting, when she’d knelt on the cold Palace floor, all unworthiness. But, then as now, this love did not want her submission. It raised her to stand, lifted her chin to the horizon. And it was not only a shared love, now, but a shared pride in what she’d become. The way mothers felt, perhaps, when they saw their daughters married.  
  
There was no Grace of Obedience, she realised, suddenly. There was valour and daring, justice and courtesy, pride, generosity and humility, but no obedience. Not that you’d guess, from talking to anyone in the rigidly structured Temple hierarchy. Some days, she could hardly draw breath without being told: “it is forbidden”.  
  
To Almsivi, of course, nothing was forbidden. Sotha Sil was beyond all restriction, having examined it, unravelled it, and discovered no use for it. Shielded in the bright raiment of divinity, Almalexia walked through fire and filth, emerging unscathed and unsullied. And Vivec… deceptive, impossible, glorious Vehk, gave themselves over to forbidden things and was crushed and cleaved and violated. And each time, they endured, and stole new secrets, and used them to rebuild themselves, each time stronger, each time more beautiful. Weeping and laughing and teaching us: yes, it will hurt. Yes, it will be worth it.  
  
“Vivec is a liar,” a now-ex-friend had sneered, when she told them of her religious conversion. “Vivec is a  _poet_ ,” she had retorted. Later, after months of study, she would have to admit that her friend had been right. Vivec  _was_  a liar. And yet, however misleading and twisting Vehk’s words, she found there was always truth in them, if not always on the surface.  
 _  
“My mouth is skilled at lying and its alibi a tooth.”_  
  
 _“This is a forbidden ritual,” “This Sermon is forbidden.”  
_ _  
_ _Forbidden by whom? Not by Vivec, not explicitly.  
  
_ _“This Sermon is untrue.”  
  
_ _Then where is the truth?  
  
“The first meaning is always hidden.”  
_  
 _“Do as I say, but not as I do. It’s all so convenient.”  
  
Wherever did I get that last one from? It’s quite incorrect… the opposite, in fact. Vivec is a liar, who teaches by example. The true lesson is: Do as I do, not as I say. What, then, has Vivec shown me?  
_  
She stared blindly out to sea, nails scraping the gunwale, breath caught in her chest.  
  
 _It’s not a prohibition, it’s a test. To see who has truly learned their Lessons. The lessons of poetry, creativity and stealing power from those who seek to control you._  
  
Mehra was still sleeping, eyes ringed with sullen mauve. Viatrix gazed at her, filled with love and a brief flash of pitying derision. Then, laughing, she shook the little librarian awake and dragged her upright. “Look!” Viatrix cried, “look at the horizon! Do you know who stands there?” Mehra groaned and blinked against the morning sun, croaking nothing intelligible. “No one,” Viatrix told her, “not yet. But it’s where we are going, and Vivec has blessed our way. This is the proof of the new, Mehra, this is the promise of the wise!”  
  
Mehra could not bear the bright horizon, shielding her face, eyes filling with tears again. “My gods have taught me nothing but lies,” she husked. “I can no longer follow where they lead.”  
  
“We were never intended to follow, once we’d learned enough! We were always intended to lead ourselves, to explore our limits, and seize our destinies!”  
  
“I’m no leader.” A sob. “I want to go back to the Library.”  
  
“Grace through Troubles, Mehra. Faith is forged in the crucible of suffering. The Temple has stagnated, no wonder the Palace doors are closed in shame.” She put her arm around Mehra’s quivering shoulders. “It’s going to be all right, I promise. We’re going the right way. But if you need someone to follow for a while, you can follow me.”  
  
“I dunno about that Temple stuff of yours,” Julan called from the bows, “but you’re wrong about one thing.” He was leaning over the port side, hair streaming, squinting through the dawn glare at the distant humps of the mainland.  
  
He wouldn’t see it, but Viatrix aimed a glare at him anyway. “What,” she enquired icily, “am I wrong about?”  
  
“The horizon.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Julan had clambered higher, and was now balancing on the gunwale, clinging precariously to a rope. “Someone  _is_  standing there.”  
  
She considered explaining that it had been a quotation, a familiar metaphor to inspire Mehra, but curiosity overrode the impulse, and she hurried forwards to join him. At first she could see nothing, but in time, a figure emerged from the mist. It was colossally tall, yet graceful, its slender arms extended outwards. Obviously a statue of some kind, though she couldn’t see who it represented.   
  
Mehra, appearing beside her, gave the answer. “Azura,” she breathed, eyes shining with the first hope Viatrix had seen in them since her rescue.  
  
Above them, Julan’s mouth had fallen open in awestruck wonder, and he looked like he might fall into the sea at any moment. When Mehra spoke, he glanced down at her and beamed. She smiled back. Viatrix restrained the impulse to knock Julan’s legs out from under him.  
  
Viatrix understood the concept of the Anticipations on an intellectual level, but the Dunmer’s appreciation for the Daedra was something she suspected she would never share. But Mehra’s hip touched hers, so she stood and watched the statue pass by, placating herself with less obvious devotions, until Blatta called her to help turn the boat north.  
  
It would get worse, she realised, as she whipped a length of rope into taut coils. Her plan had been to head for the mainland, and lose themselves somewhere in the south, perhaps make the pilgrimage to Almalexia she had always wanted. But Mehra, between small sips of tea in Blatta’s one good armchair, had whispered of a place called Holamayan, tucked away on a secluded island off the south-eastern coast of Vvardenfell. A secret hideaway for Temple dissidents, where she would be safe, and among friends. Desperate to comfort her, and under pressure from Julan, who adamantly refused to leave Vvardenfell, Viatrix had agreed. What she now overheard made her regret not standing her ground.  
  
Mehra was enthusing to Julan about the rumoured contents of the library at Holamayan. Although grateful the topic had finally returned some colour to the librarian’s pale cheeks, Viatrix found it hard to share her joy. Holamayan was, she learned, a Temple of Azura, ostensibly linked to the Tribunal, but in reality, following far older traditions. Mehra might be among friends, but she wouldn’t be. She would be a stranger again, a foreigner, a stuck up n'wah bitch. And not even her faith would be a shared point of contact, here, her devotion to Almsivi would be criticised, picked apart, dubbed naive and deluded.  
  
She glanced at Mehra, who was smiling and gazing out to sea. Julan said something to her with a smirk, and she laughed. Viatrix retired to the stern, fighting a sudden onslaught of tears for Vivec, which, it turned out, had only ever been lying in ambush.  
  
  
  
An hour or two before nightfall, they arrived at a small dock, hung with a single, golden-flamed lantern. “This it?” Blatta frowned at the map bearing Mehra’s precise annotations from memory. “It better be, else we’re lost in the damn Void.”  
  
Mehra swallowed, and looked up at the craggy island. There were large, stone steps carved into the rock, winding several times around the summit, leading to the peak. At the top, camouflaged among the rocks, was something like an huge, stone seashell. “I think so,” she said.  
  
“How in Oblivion d'you get inside?” asked Julan. He was right, the structure appeared completely sealed, without even a window.  
  
“Many of Azura’s most sacred places observe rites of liminal boundary,” said Mehra, and when this produced only blank stares, she added: “The doors only open at dawn and dusk.”  
  
“Surely they will let us inside if we knock,” protested Viatrix, but Mehra shook her head. “We must wait for the holy hour. Still, it will take some time to climb up there.” She grimaced. “For my part, I hope I can make it by sunset. My legs are so weak, I may need to stop and rest, part-way.”  
  
“Don’t worry.” Julan leapt onto the jetty, and offered her a hand out of the boat, oblivious to the look Viatrix gave him. “We’ll give you all the help you need.”  
  
“Thank you.” Mehra gripped his arm, as she found her feet on the boards. “You really are quite different from most Ashlanders.” She was smiling, intending a compliment, but, judging by his face, missed the mark.  
  
“You think?” he said, tone forcibly neutral.  
  
She blinked, confused. “I only meant–”  
  
“No, no. You’re right.” He replicated her smile, but with sharper edges. “Most Ashlanders are far nicer than I am.” He didn’t stop supporting Mehra by the arm, but his eyes were on the temple now, and he didn’t resist, when Viatrix elbowed him aside, and took over.  
  
As Julan strode off towards the stone pathway, Mehra turned to Viatrix, eyes round. “Did I say something wrong?”  
  
“Never mind him,” Viatrix told her. “He’s quite insufferable. Really more of an acquaintance than a friend. I’m not sure why I even…” She shook her head, putting the thought aside, as she gazed up at the monastery.  
  
Ahead of them, Blatta was already following Julan. Mehra took a step forwards, but Viatrix didn’t move. Pale fingers of tension were snaking through her limbs, and she could hardly feel Mehra’s arm in hers. “Are you all right?” Mehra’s soft, deep voice nudged gently at her ear.  
  
“Of course,” she snapped - too harshly, she regretted it instantly, but Mehra didn’t flinch, nothing but concern in the depths of her tawny eyes.  
  
“Are you sure?” She gave that smile, the one that felt like she was wrapping it around Viatrix’s entire body, as if she’d spent her whole life crafting it for her, this smile that fitted every part of Viatrix so completely.  _Burn all my finery, let me wear nothing else for the rest of my days.  
_  
She felt her mouth twitch. Stripped of her pride, she heard herself whisper: “I’m afraid…”   
  
“Afraid? Viatrix Petilia, who walked alone into the Ministry of Truth to rescue me, and only this morning claimed she was seeking her destiny, in the image of Lord Vivec? She’s afraid?”  
  
“I’m afraid they won’t like me, here.”  _I’m afraid you’ll never love me in the way that I love you, and I will never regret my choice if i live for a thousand years, but the fact I know it’s worth it doesn’t mean it won’t still hurt.  
  
_ “How could anyone not like you?” Mehra laughed, and squeezed her arm. “And no matter what they think of you, please know that I shall always be your friend.”  
  
She braced her smile against clenched teeth.  _Grace through Troubles, Viatrix._  
  
Sweeping her pride about her like a silk scarf, she set her foot on the first step of the mountain.  
  



	177. curses

“So it’s all been a compete waste of time?” Julan fought down the urge to sweep every brittle, yellowing scroll off the library table and onto the floor. “You’re saying that after all this, there’s nothing in any of your stupid papers that can help me at all? Just more useless nonsense about dragons and seeds that means whatever you want it to mean?”  
  
Gilvas Barelo, abbot of Holamayan Monastery, lowered his brows, and regarded Julan with weary reserve. “The fact you have not found what you sought in the lost Ashlander prophecies, or the Apographic writings of the Temple priesthood, does not render them useless. At times, our search for what we  _believe_  we want blinds us to the revelations we truly need. To he who approaches with an open mind and an open heart, the–”  
  
“Shove it up your open ass!” Slamming his chair back, Julan had barged most of the way out of the room, before he turned, clawing at his hair. “Sorry. Sorry, I just… I needed more than this.” The old priest said nothing, gathering up the ancient documents and returning them to their places on the shelves.

  
  
“NOW how much longer?”  
  
The acolyte operating the monastery doors quailed slightly beneath Julan’s glare. “Only a few more moments, I assure you, sera.” He pointed to the near-empty water-clock on the wall, next to the huge wheeled and pulleyed mechanism he was in charge of. “The Hour of Azura is almost upon us.”  
  
 _…my fist’s gonna be upon you in a minute, n'wah…_ Julan managed to keep it under his breath, telling himself the monk probably hadn’t meant the ‘sera’ part sarcastically, even if he couldn’t help hearing it that way. He rolled his shoulders and jiggled his sword-hilt, while the acolyte wiped clammy palms down his oversized robe.  
  
As soon as the stone canopy  ground upwards far enough to make room, Julan ducked under it and bounded into the dusk. “Please do not tarry past the limit of the holy hour,” called the door-keep. “Once the sacred shield closes, it shall not reopen until dawn.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, got it.” Julan was already off the path and away, cutting downhill through the herb-strewn brush that covered most of the small island. It didn’t compare to the Ministry, but he still found being trapped in the windowless shell of Holamayan for twenty-two hours a day hard to take. The wind on his skin, and the dim, rose-gold sunlight in his eyes felt almost good enough to make up for the complete lack of alcohol on the island. He skidded through the kreshweed down to the shore, where he splashed seawater onto his face, and burned off some energy with whatever he could remember of his sword drills. Then he found a westward facing rock, to watch the rest of the sunset, and try to think clearly.  
  
 _Now what, s'wit? Back to the Shrine of Azura you saw from the boat? To tell her what? That you got your hands on centuries of prophecies and wisdom, and a blind guar could have made more of it than you? That you need something simpler, need to be spoon-fed? Might as well ask her to kill you, and let Nerevar reincarnate right now, if a baby could do better. Get it together._  
  
He pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket, on which he’d begun making notes, back when he still thought it might help.  
  
 _7 CURSES: fire ash flesh ghosts seed dispair dreams_  
  
He wasn’t sure what had made him write it down. He’d never had that habit before, it wasn’t his way. But… his memory still felt traitorously uneven since his escape, even more than usual. He’d put it down to weakness and exhaustion, but days later, he felt, if anything, worse. Like waking from a dream so long and vivid that his memories were still all twined up in it. Like waking after a drunken night, with the queasy realisation that his recent history was a blurred and broken patchwork of holes, things he ought to remember, but couldn’t.  
  
Frustration forcing his gaze from the paper, he looked up and saw Azura’s star, hanging between the silhouettes of two Emperor Parasols. All at once, scents surged from his hindbrain: soil, moss, sweat,  _salty-acid-bitter-sweet–_   _…OK, now… now that was definitely a dream, and this is NOT the time.  
  
_ He shook it off, telling the quickening embers in his blood to sit down and shut up. Fixed his eyes on the rocks around him, instead, watching them blacken as the sun sank low over the sea.  
  
 _Never mind the past, never mind all these half-cracked dreams and curses. I need to know the future! I need something solid, to–_  
  
Stuffing the paper back into his pocket, his hand touched something else, wedged into the deepest corner. Small, hard, smooth. He pulled it out. It was a tooth. A canine.  
  
He stared at it, overcome by familiarity, yet with no idea why he had it. His mind really was coming apart at the seams. Panicked, he ran his tongue around his own mouth. Nothing missing.  
  
 _Nothing missing?_  
  
Determined to wrench free of the useless knot of confusion, he almost threw the tooth across the sand, but before his arm could move, a mingled flood washed through him  _–anger-despair-desire-hatred-love-love-lo_ – He took a ragged breath, heart racing.  
  
The sun’s last sliver hovered above the horizon, a gold coin on the brink of slipping down the drain.  
  
Julan watched it go, face transfixed with horror, as if the loss of the sun were his sole responsibility. As if he’d neglected a candle, and let the universe burn down.  
  
“Fuck,” he said. “Sheo- _fucking_ -gorath.”  
  



	178. you

The smallest possible hour of the night, in Holamayan Monastery.  
  
In the chapel, cold incense and still bells.  
  
In the kitchen, in the alchemy lab, all swept clean and put away.  
  
In the dormitories, tired acolytes snatching a few hours' rest between the Midnight Invocation and preparations for the Blessing of the Dawn.  
  
In the library... bare feet, treading softly. Silently, even, but accompanied by a constant, urgently-whispered monologue.

"...just hope everyone's really asleep this time. They all think I've gone mad. I think I might have gone mad, too. But I have to keep talking to you, Iya, so I don't forget again. I made Viatrix remember you for a while, that's how I know I haven't lost it completely, and invented someone who never was. She remembered you getting her into the Ministry, so I know you were there, alive, not captured. But then she forgot you again, and gave me that Temple look, and said, Julan, I hope you're not going to do something crazy. She didn't say crazy, she said something else, but she meant crazy. Yeah, I know. You didn't like that word, either."  
  
He carried a scrib-oil lamp and a steaming redware cup. He put the cup down among the floor cushions in the meditation area, and began swinging the lamp along the bookshelves, searching for a volume. "Pretty sure any way you slice it, I'm gonna do something crazy, though."  
  
He found the book he was after, and placed it with the cup on the soft rugs heaped in the corner of the library, positioning the lamp nearby. After a moment's thought, he began arranging the cushions into a sort of nest shape around him. Once he was satisfied, he knelt before his equipment, cleared his throat, and addressed the empty shadows as loudly as he dared.  
  
"This is a summoning ritual. You never taught me any Conjuration, so I'm making it up. Or... I guess it could be a teleportation spell, for all I know. It's not meant to be a soul-trapping spell, because you're _not_ dead, but... I don't care what kind of spell it is, as long as it works. You told me magic was about willpower, and desire, all the rest was just ways to focus and direct that energy. I hope you were right. I don't know much about magic, but I know a lot about wanting things."  
  
He reached into his right-hand pocket, and deposited a slightly bruised fungus onto the rug in front of him. "So," he said. "OK. First, while I was out, I got you a mushroom. The small, purple kind you like. You told me the long name once, but I wasn't listening, so you have to come and tell me again." He rolled the mushroom gently with his finger, furrowing his brow at minor signs of damage.  
  
"I remember you," he said, louder, emphasising his words to the silent darkness, and to himself. "Not everything. I can't see your face properly. I don't even have your name, except one letter: Iya. But... I still _know_ you. I _remember_ you. I _miss_ you." He frowned harder, still manipulating the mushroom. "I miss your hands, and the way they move. Like you're afraid of touching things... or not touching things. And of regretting it either way, so your fingers hover in between, tying themselves in knots. I miss them in my hair. I miss them brushing mine, in the street."  
  
Taking gentle leave of the mushroom, he transferred his attention to the redware cup.  
  
"Second, I made you tea. I sweetened it. I think I finally worked out the pattern - you sweeten it when you're trying to relax, and leave it bitter when you're trying to do something difficult, like write, or get out of bed. Is it like the tragic stories, you find pain more motivating than pleasure? Or maybe you're just scared of sweetness, because you know you get addicted so easily. You shouldn't worry, though. You're stronger than you think."  
  
He took a small sip of the tea, and grimaced. "Too sweet for me, you definitely have to come drink this." Twisting the cup against the rug, he watched the bittergreen petals swirl, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "I miss your tongue. Sharp as scathecraw, but I never minded. You could make it sweet enough, when you wanted. I miss its long words, and its silences. I miss the way it gets all veering and musical sometimes, like chimes jangling in the wind, when you let it run ahead of you."  
  
From his other pocket, he drew a small scrap of fabric, folded several times around its hidden contents. He placed it gently on the rug, with the rest.  
  
"Third, I have a tooth. It's OK, you don't have to look at it. I know it's yours, but you still might be scared of it. You were always so scared of the things you thought were inside you, but... we've all got them, Iya. Anyway, it's embarrassing I kept this, so for Azura's sake come and laugh at me."  
  
His finger still rested on top of the cloth. "They say every bone is a door through the wall of the world. I never had ancestors, and I never learned those rites either, but you're not my ancestor, and you're not dead, so I'm trying it anyway. Wherever you are, this is a door, and I'm calling you through it. If that's not real magic, if it's not possible, come here and tell me to my face. Look me in the eye and tell me, because I miss your eyes the most. I miss them smiling, and crying, and filled with such... I don't know. Things you said didn't count as love. I think you're still a liar, sometimes."  
  
He pinned the tooth to the rug, shoving it into the pile until it had its own small valley. "Gods, Iya, it was you who said I needed to trust my own judgement, and not other people's, so that means it's OK for me to ignore some of the complete blighted nonsense you talk, right? Sheo-fucking-gorath! Like... that time you said only amnesia could fix us, and then right after that you said I'd turn you back into the person you were when we met! So... I mean, what am I to...? Oh, and then later, you said that person was gone forever, except by then it was a bad thing! And... and... it's not just that all this stuff doesn't make any sense, when you take it all together - although it doesn't - it's that every single time, you're using it as a reason why you're unlovable. And if that's not guarshit, I don't know what is. Come here and tell me I'm wrong. I challenge you. I _summon_ you."  
  
He jabbed the tooth one more time, eyes narrowed, demanding a response from the shadows around him. Receiving none, he hesitated a few moments longer, then moved his hand onto the book. He ground his jaw at it, fingers jittering against the blue, gold-embossed leather. "Uh... I don't know what I expected to happen, exactly, but if the other stuff didn't work... I have one other idea. A back-up plan, kind of." He cleared his throat, and threw a swift glance towards the doorway.  
  
"They don't have any sad romance books here, I asked. As you can probably tell, it's not that kind of library. I did find this, though. Mehra says it's about love, but I don't get how. I don't think Vivec uses words the same way I do. But then neither do you, and you were always reading these with a faraway look on your face, and, well. I like it when you read me things. So, uh... I'm not as good, but I'll try. And this doesn't mean I agree with any of Vivec's guarshit, so don't start."  
  
The library had no doors, only dark archways, leading towards the chapel on one side, and the sleeping quarters on the other. Julan watched them suspiciously for for a few more seconds. Then he scrabbled between his shoulder-blades till he had a fistful of shirt, and yanked it off over his head. "Not strictly necessary, but..." His mouth quirked briefly, then with a shrug, he began removing his pants as well. "No sense chancing half measures. I mean, this IS a library. If I want to summon you, maybe I have to beat you at your own game."  
  
Opening the book, he flicked through pages of scholarly preamble to the beginning of the text itself. Took a last, nervous glance around, listening for footsteps. Then he adjusted the lamp, took the book in one hand, and began to read.  
  
"The formulas of proper Velothi magic continue in ancient tradition, but that virility is dead--" _we'll see about that, you flame-brained s'wit_ "--by which I mean at least replaced. Truth owes its medicinal nature to the estab...lishment of the myth of justice." _Azura's star, what is this crap?_  
  
"Its cura...tive properties it likewise owes to the concept of... sacrifice." He broke off, and stared wildly into space. "Hey," he said, "I just remembered! You had a... you had that awful song, didn't you? About all the things some girl had to sacrifice for love. Listen, I'm not doing that, like you're some dead khan I have to kill a guar for! Because that's all death ritual, and you don't need that! I'm not cutting myself into bits for you, Iya, or throwing them away. All of me is staying right here, because you're coming back for it." He exhaled sharply, and returned to the page.  
  
His initial fervour had worn off. He read mechanically, uncomprehendingly.  
  
"This is a view prim...arily based on a pro...lific abo...lition of an implied prof...anity..." _oh for fuck's sake!_ _This is stupid, why did I think--DON'T THINK, JUST KEEP GOING._  
  
The words were stiff and awkward, catching his tongue, taunting him with his own stupidity at every stumble. He resigned himself to none of it making any sense, and forged onwards.  
  
"...seen in ceremonies, knife fighting, hunting and the exploration of the poetic." _This isn't worki--SHUT UP. FOCUS.  
_  
He tried fixing his mind on Iya instead, on the fragments he had shored against forgetting.  
  
"On the ritual of occasions, which comes to us from the days of the cave glow..." _I have no idea what that meant, but hey, remember when you exploded your eyeballs with overpowered night eye potions in that bandit lair?_  
  
And... after a while...  
  
"...seen as an act of the highest love, which is a return from the astral destiny, and the marriages between."  
  
...he had the creeping sensation parts were almost making sense, he was just too slow to catch it. Individual words would leap out, and he'd try fixing his mind on those, on what they meant to him, regardless of what Vivec intended. But he couldn't stop to think, before the sentences moved on, dragging him with them.  
  
"To keep one's powers intact at such a stage is to allow for the existence of what can only be called a continual spirit."  
  
He tried to identify and separate out the alien echoes in his mind: _what would he say to me now?_  
  
_What in Oblivion do you think you're doing?_  
  
"Make of your love a defence against the horizon."  
  
_What do you want from me?  
_  
"The lover is the highest country, and a series of beliefs. He is the sacred city, bereft of a double." _You know what._  
  
"The uncultivated land of monsters is the rule."  
  
Then... not even the words, but... something behind them, raw and desperate. Building, yearning, flowing through him, reaching outwards. He wasn't sure it had anything to do with the spell, but he went with it, gave himself over: _all or nothing!_  
  
"This scripture is directly ordered by the codes of Mephala, the origin of sex and murder, defeated only by those who take up those ideas without my intervention."  
  
It gripped him, as if by the throat. Breathing was difficult.  
  
"The religious elite is not a tendency or a correlation. They are dogma complemented by the influence of the untrustworthy sea and the governance of the stars, dominated at the centre by the sword, which is nothing without a victim to cleave unto."  
  
They all could have been watching him now, for all he knew. He couldn't tear his eyes from the words, and his ears were full of the rushing of his blood, the thundering of his heart.  
  
"This is the love of God and he would show you more, predatory, but at the same time instrumental to the will of critical harvest, a scenario by which one becomes as he is, of male and female..."  
  
Some sentences never seemed to end. His head swam, from forgetting to breathe, from the way the words jammed themselves into his subconscious and levered it open, spilling things out. Panting, he groped for the next line, the book swaying in his hand. The air he drew in was heady with energy... magic? faith? desire? Was it working, was something happening? He couldn't tell, but it filled him, forced him onwards.  
  
"Mark the norms of violence and it barely registers, suspended as it is by treaties written between the original spirits."  
  
_...mpossible invalid ritual completely impossible why must he always..._  
  
"This should be seen as an opportunity, and in no way tedious, though some will give up..." _NO._  
_  
__...not how summoning works at all..._  
  
"...for it is easier to kiss the lover than become one." _fuck you it is! but... i'll take the easy way, just this once, if i-- just-- please--  
_  
_...he's completely misinterpreting the text...  
  
_ He couldn't tell what was out loud or in his head any more, imagination or sensation. Everything was swimming _,_ shaking, tilting. But he was over the crest of it now, running on empty, but running downhill, words flowing unstoppably forwards.  
  
"The lower regions _crawl with these souls  
_  
_...ask for nothing need nothing don't force these messy desires onto..._  
  
_caves of shallow treasures_  
  
_...how could he why would he how dare..._  
  
_meeting in places to testify by way of extens--  
_  
His balance went.  
  
_\--ion, when love  
  
_ He flailed forwards, lost the book and upset the lamp--  
  
_is only satisfied  
  
_ \--the final words a neon after-image as shadows blinded him  
  
_by a considerable  
  
_ but he was  
_  
(incalculable)  
_  
almost _\--_  
  
_effo--_


	179. i

There is a liminality, between spaces, between is and is-not. Neither Mundus nor Aetherius, nor even the Void, yet not  _not_  any of these, defined only by indefinition.   
  
Nothing can live there. But some vague unthing might loiter there a while, that had lost too much to stay in Mundus, but not enough to leave.  
  
If that sounds vague, this is because everything about it was vague, this… we’ll call it a wisp. It wasn’t really anything, barely able to support the weight of a noun, let alone adjectives or adverbs, but wisp is a small, light word, and will do. This wisp, then, was hesitating. Lingering in the peace of not having to choose.

But indecision was dangerous, here. Without certainty, agency, will, the Aurbis forgets you exist. The wisp itself barely remembered. It had been content to be forgotten, to blink out softly. To opt out of the system and slip through the cracks of ontology itself.  
  
But one thread remained. And someone kept  _pulling_  on it.  
  
“–fort. The ending… hhh… of the words… hhh… is Alm…si…vi…”  
  
It was  _honestly so fucking rude_  
  
It didn’t really feel things, but it had a certain awareness. Of Aetherius, close, blinding-bright, beckoning. Of Mundus, distant and hazy. Of a glassy-eyed Dunmer, collapsing into darkness and cushions, chest heaving.  
  
 _of course it didn’t work what was he thinking_  
  
The wisp… really, even “wisp” might imply too much. A coherent identity, however ephemeral. This was a collection of scraps and fragments, memories and traits. It included a knowledge of the elf in Holamayan library, but not any understanding of how to relate to it, or why it might want to.  
  
 _that body he wants was a prison that mind was a prison was a cage full of broken glass_  
  
 _can’t make me go back can’t make me push all these useless things back into a body_  
  
 _impossible anyway its gone i lost it hurtful unfixable thing_  
  
Reminders of hands and eyes had been alien and meaningless. Unable to do anything with them, the wisp fell to listing again, to cataloguing and rearranging the scraps. _  
_  
 _this part i shaped just to anger my mother and one day i found that it wouldn’t unshape_  
  
 _this is a scar from a twelve-year-old boy’s eyes. such a slight thing, so long ago, why could i never heal it cleanly?_  
  
 _here is a cruel crude double-edged weapon, forged in a furnace of sheer desperation_  
  
 _here is a tower of the brittlest bones_  
  
 _just let go let them all go why can’t you do it? no possible function only counter-productive processes and self-destructive mechanisms_  
  
 _you only hoarded them as rebellion but you don’t need that any more._  
  
 _let them rest_  
  
 _but they’re mine mine can’t make me annihilate myself for you why create me only to decreate me why birth me to bury me alive why_  
  
 _then ascend_  
  
 _to what?  
_  
 _stasis asks merely for nothing, for itself, which is nothing, as you were in the eight everlasting imperfections_  
  
 _eight… everlasting… the aedra. it means the aedra. why imperfect why when they need nothing? they’re perfect, complete…_  
  
 _they’re…_  
  
 _because something that needs nothing cannot change. change requires that you need things. that you allow incompletion, room for growth, growth requires fuel, new input_  
  
 _because something that cannot change cannot receive new input. cannot interact, cannot communicate_  
  
 _because something that cannot interact or change is the same as nothing. perfect stasis. perfect nothingness. only nothing is pure enough for perfection_  
  
 _then how can any of us be free? ascend?_  
  
 _free from–?_  
  
 _free to–?_  
  
 _ascend to–?_  
  
 _a communion so complete, you merge with the divine, merge with everything, dissolve every boundary between yourself and the universe_  
  
 _…and render yourself alone again. perfect freedom, perfect isolation_  
  
 _then–?_  
  
 _what–?_  
  
 _to choose contact, is to choose limitation, boundaries. connection requires two. you could go ba…_  
  
 _–no!–_  
  
 _…could still change, if you…_  
  
 _–no!!! i can’t get better there, i’ll never be better, that realm was made for decay, for severance, for pain and constant, unhealable breaking, no forgetting only scar after scar after–_  
  
 _But it would be worse… wouldn’t it? if your suffering left no mark. if you were unchanged by it, shifting as ash, healing perfectly only to break yourself in the same places again and again, that is rightly called torture, so–_  
  
 _–but there are so many places to break yourself–_  
  
 _Yes, but still worse if pain were only ever just pain, forgotten and useless, leaving you the same stumbling fool you were before. Memory isn’t a cage, it’s a safety rail, a signpost._  
  
 _–but…_  
  
 _All things are energy. Pain, too, is an energy, and all energy can be transformed. Must be, eventually._  
  
 _…could i still choose how?_  
  
 _Perhaps. But only there, not here. A seed requires the soil._  
  
 _i don’t know how to–_  
  
 _Look down. He told you how._  
  
 _but i gave it away, and i can’t get it back. everything has a price, and i can’t afford it_  
  
 _Then steal it. Everything is energy, is creation, is imagination._  
  
 _he wants someone who isn’t real_  
  
 _Exactly. So choose. Turn the illusory nothing inside out and find everything, all the infinite facets. Choose the parts that fit. To be affixed to a symbol, to be this, and not that, at least not yet–_  
  
 _i’ll fall again_  
  
 _You might feel something._  
  
 _not for long!_  
  
 _True, perhaps not long. And it will hurt, and you do not like to hurt. But that’s why it was love, the return from astral destiny, the refusal to look away from suffering, that’s why you have to move closer, find the horizon, the star-bruised boundary, the proper alignment of the bones–_  
  
  
An Altmer might infer the existence of counter-aetheric force from the self-evident fact that an Aetheric force must exist, divinity attracting its essence back to itself. That Altmer largely fail to rise spontaneously from the ground, must, therefore, be due to an opposing force. (The implications for other races are disputed, especially by those races.)  
  
A Bosmer might argue that gravity is the love Yffre bears for us, that Nirn itself bears for us, expressed in the physical laws that are themselves the remains of the gods who sacrificed themselves for love of us. The ultimate manifestation of the Maran aspectual essence, that cosmic attraction and longing for union that draws us together.  
  
A Dunmer would flare their nostrils at the crashing thump from the floor above, and add twenty gold to your bill for contravention of Redoran virtues.  
  
Whatever it was, it remembered him.  
  
and he slipped–  
  
–into energy, into raw creatia itself, and in the instant the choice was forced upon him, he chose–  
  
–and fell.  
  
And the ground was an illusion, but the arms that caught him weren’t, and both of them falling, endlessly, through the soil and into the sky, from one end of consciousness to the other, from soul to breath to blood to bone, from earth to heaven to earth to heaven, again and again and again and again.


	180. here

Dawn in Holamayan, and the acolytes’ chant echoed through the chapel, calling upon Azura to watch over them and lend her blessing to the new day.  
  
Dawn, too, in the library, but if Azura was watching, she kept it to herself. Perhaps, like the other residents of the monastery, she had the discretion to give its current occupants some privacy. There was a softly breathing tangle of limbs among the cushions. Grey and gold, mingled and indistinguishable in the colourless dark. Not sleeping, not quite. Now and again, an arm would shift, draw closer. A name would be passed, carefully, from mouth to mouth, as if it might slip away between and be lost.

Despite the nebulous haze of the hour, and all external appearances to the contrary, Iriel was blissfully aware of his own individuality.  
  
 _Like Anu, I sundered myself that I might know myself. That I might define my limits and shape my own soul.  
_  
He’d been reborn into light. Magelight, spilling like pale sunbeams from his barely-there fingertips, merging into a soft core at his chest, as his body condensed around it, recalling its forms and functions, aided by his lover’s hands. _  
_  
 _Love isn’t union. It’s the weight of his thigh on mine, it’s the shifting sweetness of skin on skin, the borders of lands longing for trespass. It’s my hand on his neck, and the desperate pulse there; the blood of a heart, not mine. Mine. His eyes, tracking my changes from breath to breath. How could I love, if not another? Love is no state, but a motion towards. An exchange, a cycle. Weakness and strength, turn and about, rolling over and under._  
  
 _Sex isn’t union. Sex is when you try to merge with someone, and then, gloriously, can’t. And every detail of difference becomes heightened, electric, and you throw yourself at it, try to lose yourself, push past the edge of it, until for one red moment you think you succeed, but it’s an illusion, and seconds later you’re back, breath knocked out of you, fallen from a great height out of the divine, conscious of separation and void and the inadequacies of words beyond skin… but maybe, if you’re lucky, you dragged them down with you.  
_  
His light had faded now, barely a gleam remaining. He remained.  
  
 _So what if I’m just light, all surface? Our perceptions define everything. What matters is the light others see reflected from me. It doesn’t matter to them what’s underneath, doesn’t matter if bones or mushrooms or nothing at all. If my perceptions aren’t real then let me choose theirs, instead. Choose and cherish the people who project their goodness and beauty on to me, so I might shine with it, and reflect it back. Choose to believe in it, try to live up to it. It’s as real as anything else about me._  
  
“How many moles did I have on my left shoulderblade?” he murmured.  
  
Breathy laughter from Julan. “Are you testing me?”  
  
“No, I’m testing me. I don’t know if I got everything right.”  
  
More laughter, sleepily affectionate. “What’re you on about now?”  
  
“It was all gone. I had to remake it. And I knew if I started changing things, I’d never stop, never decide, and it’d be too late. So I had to be the same. It was the only way. But I still might have made mistakes.”  
  
“I like you the same.” Julan was all amiable incomprehension, tenderly tracing the Daedra-nail scars down Ire’s back. “I like the mistakes, too.”  
  
“I know. The scars were the easiest part to remember.” He felt Julan’s hand move up his neck, stroke the silky wisps on his scalp. Ire caressed the arm, kissing it where it passed near his lips. “I almost made my hair long again,” he admitted. “But… it’ll grow. I shouldn’t cheat. Perhaps I’m even getting used to keeping it short.”  
  
Julan’s fingers, returning downwards via Ire’s collarbone, had stopped moving at a point on his shoulder, where his skin’s texture changed. Where it roughened, dimpled and rippled like sea-tossed driftwood. Iriel lay motionless, as Julan followed the unfamiliar marks down his arm. Where the flames from the torch had surged up his shirtsleeve, before they’d forced him to the floor.  
  
 _Perhaps he won’t–_  
  
“I wish you hadn’t kept this one.”  
 _  
He has.  
_  
“I’m sorry,” Iriel whispered. “I had to. I had to keep everything. I couldn’t just vanish it, but… perhaps it’ll fade, on its own.”  
 _  
I don’t think suffering ever granted me strength or enlightenment, but… whatever else it gave me, and however else it changed me, I survived. I’m still here, still breathing. My possibilities are still intact. Not every possibility I might ever have had, but… enough. There are so many. Ones I might never have seen, before._  
  
 _Whatever I have now, I’m starting from here. Whatever I have tomorrow… whatever we have… we’ll start from there again, too._  
  
He felt Julan’s hands, mapping his marred skin, memorising its new contours. Until they slowed, and suddenly clamped around his back, pulling him in. A sharp intake of breath against his neck.  
  
 _Vivec’s love was the return from astral destiny. Mine is nothing so lofty, but…_  
  
Julan’s sobs were coming slow and uneven. Past grief or joy, only jagged lumps of tension breaking from him, like rocks from a coastal cliff. Ire held him tighter still. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m here now, I promise. I’m here.”


	181. communication

“I’m getting to that!” The molecrab turned a little too vigorously, and had to steady itself on the battlement while it re-aligned its eyeholes. “But prophecy’s not simply a matter of… I’m just trying to… it’s a complicated question! For example, what do you mean by ‘truth’?”  
  
The squid didn’t roll its eyes, as they were lidless lenses of pale violet crystal, but it rocked backwards with a derisive snort. “You’re seriously asking me–”  
  
“No no no!” The crab shook rapidly, its muffled voice reverberating in tandem. “I don’t mean in some guarshit philosophistical, black-is-white, nothing-is-real-so-you-can’t-prove-me-wrong kind of sense, I just mean… prophecies come from dreams and visions, correct?”  
  
“Yeah…”

“But a lot of dreams are obviously nonsense, agreed? I’m not saying they’re all nonsense - it’s been argued fairly persuasively that dreams are one of the channels Aetherial spirits and Daedric entities can use to communicate with Mundus. I’ve also heard of someone claiming to be speaking from the Dreamsleeve, but I think that must be a misunderstanding, I don’t see how a soul could survive intact in the Dreamsleeve. Anyway… while I can’t imagine it’s common, and I’ve certainly never had one, I’m willing to accept that inter-planar communication through dreams is possible. Communication. Which would be a true dream, up to a point, in that it’s not completely created by your own mind. But simply being a valid communication from an Aetherial spirit, and  _especially_  not from a Daedra, still wouldn’t guarantee that a prophecy was  _true_ , in the sense of, 'legitimately destined to happen’.”  
  
“Look–” Seeing its attempt at interruption washed away like a twig in a tsunami, the squid sighed, and slumped against the stonework, nails scraping a nervy, not-quite-rhythm.  
  
“And this is still the case, if the spirit in question, or… all right, let’s say Daedra. For the sake of argument, it’s a Daedra. Even if we assume that this Daedra has legitimate knowledge of the future, through… Aetherial pan-temporal awareness, or whatever, debatable as that seems, given the ridiculous behaviour of most Daedra… even if… Oh, and if we assume that they’re speaking in good faith - though gods know why anyone would assume that. But let’s be charitable, let’s allow, purely hypothetically, that Daedra can see future events, and communicate them accurately to their chosen faithful through dreams and visions–”  
  
“Hold on–” Another half-hearted interjection from the squid, doomed to failure, as the molecrab was hurtling unstoppably towards its emphatic crescendo.  
  
“None of that  _matters!_  Because here’s the thing, it doesn’t work that way! Prophecies can’t ever be accurate, because by communicating the future, you’re changing it! The future isn’t fixed - look at the Elder Scrolls! Or, actually, don’t! Don’t ever look at the Elder Scrolls, because while they contain, allegedly, the past, present and future, they’re inherently chaotic and mutable, and trying to understand them sends you blind! Reading them changes  _them_ , and changes  _you_ , and not for the better!” The molecrab threw up a hand. “As I understand it, anyway. This is all basic Mysticism, you’ll have to petition the  Psijiics if you want something more onto… chrono… metaphysically precise.”  
  
Julan pulled off the cephalopod helm and spat dishevelled strands of hair from his mouth. “Iya, I understood about three words of that through this blighted thing, but I wasn’t arguing, only asking. We both agreed it was more important to come here and check on the Guild, than it was to search for that shrine to Azura again, so–”  
  
“Put that back on,” snapped the crab, “you’re a wanted man.”  
  
“Maybe, but I’m also a hot, irritated man who can’t breathe properly, and who thinks if we’ve walked into a trap, be it Temple or Camonna Tong, it’s too late to avoid it now, and wants to die free.”  
  
A short silence from the molecrab. “Fine,” Iriel said, emerging, pink-cheeked, from the crabshell, “but we’re putting them back on before we leave Wolverine Hall.”  
  
Julan’s Divine Intervention amulet had brought them to Sadrith Mora’s Imperial fort. Camonna Tong no longer prowled its halls, as Imperial troopers refuse to tolerate that sort of thing indefinitely. However, from their current position on the highest battlement, Iriel and Julan could see thick clumps of Dunmeri figures lurking near the walls of Dirty Muriel’s. The cornerclub windows were dark and still.  
  
Julan fidgeted. “We should just go. Whoever that priestess went to fetch, it can’t be good.”  
  
“Who should have kept their helm on downstairs, then? Gods, it’s like you  _want_  to get arrested again. It might be my name on that list, but it’s your physical description! But honestly, she was Imperial Cult. Unless you think she’s buckling on her secret Ordinator armour, as we speak?”  
  
Julan smirked at the memory of the confused entry in the bounty list posted on the Fighter’s Guild door. “Chasing white guar, the lot of them.” One foot was shoving his bag to and fro across the tower-top. “I just can’t deal with all this waiting, right now.”  
  
“As opposed to the rest of the time, when you simply  _adore_  sitting arou–”  
  
“Sheogorath, give it a rest. You’re having a good day for words, I see. Been saving them up?”  
  
“Yes. And possibly.” Iriel’s mouth twitched tight for a moment. “I feel like a flask of astroprasium carbonate solution.”  
  
“Is that good?”  
  
“It’s… fizzy.” Now it was his eyebrow that twitched. “And salty, and hard to keep the cork in.”  
  
Julan squinted over the battlement, gauging the distance to the cornerclub. “There’s more of those fetchers down there than I’ve ever seen. You’re sure you can’t cast invisibility?”  
  
“I’m sure I don’t want to try. The same way I don’t want to try skooma, to see if I get re-addicted or not.” He joined Julan in looking over the edge. “I might manage Slowfall.”  
  
“Blighted hells, no! Maybe I can–”  
  
The trapdoor creaked, and they both spun around, but instead of a Tong glove, or an enamelled gauntlet, a willowy golden hand was lifting it. When a head of shimmering blond hair joined it, Ire recognised the Altmer evoker from the Mages’ Guild, a floor below.  
  
“Iriel!” he cried, clinging to the ladder with his other hand, but still swaying from the exertion. “In Xarxes’ own truth, I thought I heard your voice!”  
  
“You did,” Ire admitted, ignoring Julan’s triumphant expression, and his  _sotto voce_ , “Keep your helm on, Julan.”  
  
“Iriel,” the newcomer repeated, as he clambered gracelessly onto the tower-top, “do you not remember me? I am Helende’s good friend, Tusamircil of Aspenreach.” When Iriel continued to stare, he added, “She requested I lend you a pair of russula umbersilk anabreeches, once.” He forced a tepid smile.  
  
“Oh.” Ire said. “Yes. Thanks.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times. “If you ever want them back, you’ll have to help me get over to the cornerclub.”  
  
Tusamircil’s already arched brows shot higher. “Oh, no, my intention was quite the reverse! This is why Helende asked us to watch out for you! To tell you that you must certainly not return to the cornerclub!”  
  
“You spoke to her?” Julan demanded. “When? What’s going on over there?”  
  
“I really couldn’t say, but it all sounds terribly dangerous. But please wait one more moment, she left you a missive she believed would explain everything.” With that, Tusamircil’s head vanished again. When he reappeared a little later, he had a small, sealed scroll, which he handed up to them from his precarious position on the ladder.  
  
Iriel opened the seal, and sighed at the thief-code marks that greeted him. Julan remembered more than he did, though, and between them, they decrypted the following:  
  
  
 _Dear Iriel. And probably the other one, I suppose. Very well, Julan, no hard feelings now. It’s time to move on, in all possible ways._  
  
 _We can’t hold out here any longer, but we can give the old place a good send-off. If Dren wants to send an army, we’ll throw a surprise party for them. There’s going to be cake. It’s made of all sorts of alchemical horrors, and M is “baking” it in the furnace, as I speak[crossed out] write. E has rigged the entire place with trigger-spells. He’s making it look like his traps outside are failing, but it’s a ruse, to draw them in. It’s almost time for tea, but you mustn’t come join us for this one._  
  
 _The others are already gone and safe. Getting the guar out quietly wasn’t easy, though still easier than C. But once it was clear S wouldn’t leave without P, P wouldn’t leave without B, and B wouldn’t leave without C, there was only one solution. They’ve all gone to S’s camp. B obviously still fallen from S’s starry heights, but once she (to her great irritation I might add) couldn’t bring herself to kill him, she found there was considerable profit in his attempts to make up for it. So it goes. Not my summon-circle, not my scamp-fight, as they say._  
  
 _If you read this and the club is still standing, then get clear, fast. It won’t be long, and if all goes well, Dren will be livid. There should be enough corpses in there for them never to guess who, if any of us, escaped. Don’t give them evidence otherwise._  
  
 _M &E are staying until the end, to ensure everything goes off. I’m trusting E to get M out in time, so they better not get any silly ideas from those ghastly novels the two of you are so keen on. My ride will be along shortly. Not sure what’s next, but you can contact me through T in Tel Mora, once the dust’s settled. That’s my last order: stay in touch. This may be the end of the Guild on Vvardenfell, but we’re still family. For now, though, lay as low as you can._  
  
 _Almost forgot. Another letter arrived for you. You’ll want to read this one, I think._  
  
 _Much love,_  
  
 _H.  
  
  
_ Iriel looked at Tusamircil. “Another letter?”  
  
“I imagine it must be in here.” The mage hauled something else up the ladder, with obvious difficulty. Julan helped him get it onto the tower-top: a sack. In it was a selection of Iriel’s possessions, skimmed hurriedly from his attic room.  
  
“No time!” Julan caught Ire’s arm, as he began investigating the contents. “You saw what she wrote, we have to go!” He ran to the battlements again. “Was the cornerclub chimney smoking like that, before? We have to get to the docks!” He rounded on Tusamircil. “You mages teleport people! Can’t you send us somewhere better than one of your blighted guildhalls, in a city full of guards?”  
  
Tusamircil’s chin jerked upwards. “While not a guild-guide myself, I am married to one, and in frequent conversation with many arcane specialists among my friends and colleagues in the Summerset expatriate community. As I understand it, the limitation of destinations to licensed locations is rigidly enforced, for extremely–”  
  
“Hey,” Iriel was glaring at him, frowning. “Were  _you_  the loose-tongued jizzbiscuit who told so many people I was here, that my fucking ma found out?”   
  
Tusamircil swallowed. “I’ll fetch my wife.”  
  
  
Iniel of Rillowbeck’s violet eyes were as round as the rillow-blossoms that cover the banks of the stream, running from her home-town to nearby Lillandril. “Can you really be suggesting I transport you along…” she licked her lips and dropped her voice “…unregulated channels?”  
  
“Yes,” Iriel said, flatly.  
  
Her long lashes fluttered as she blinked, thoroughly scandalised. “Impossible! Even if it were permitted, it’s much too great a distance. When there’s no receiving chamber to focus the–”  
  
“As far as the docks, then!”  
  
“I can’t! It’s too close to Tel Naga and the Council Hall! If the Telvanni detected illicit teleportation, I could lose my licence!”  
  
“Well, you have to get us out of here somehow! The pair of you owe me for spilling my location to my ma and her poison-pen!”  
  
“I…” She faltered, playing with a loose strand of scarlet hair. “It’s extremely valuable, so I confess I’m reluctant, but I do have a scroll of win–”  
  
“Yes!” Iriel was suddenly animated, almost glowing with excitement. “That. Give me that, please. Now, as in, very immediately, yes.”


	182. apology

A mushroom, its broad cap fending off the noon-day sun, on the outskirts of somewhere completely different.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about. You were worried about money, and it’ll be far cheaper to sail from here than from Sadrith Mora. With less chance of recognition!”  
  
Julan remained silent. He leaned back against the mushroom, arms braced on either side of his neck, fingers locked together at the nape. His eyes were closed.  
  
“Listen, how was I supposed to know that was Gothren’s bedroom window?”

Julan opened his eyes, but didn’t focus them beyond his elbows. He drew a long, serrated breath, and held it.  
  
“You didn’t want to be stuck up there forever, did you?”  
  
Julan released the breath, in something between a growl and a groan.  
  
“Honestly, I’m amazed this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often in a Telvanni town, levitation being what it is. I can’t believe they got so unreasonably…  _unreasonable_ about a simple…”  
  
Beyond Julan’s elbows, Iriel’s eyes veered back and forth, creased in worried scrutiny. Grimacing, he changed tack: “I’m sorry. I got carried away.”  
  
Julan closed his eyes again.  
  
“All right, perhaps  _you_ did, technically speaking.” Iriel was hunching slightly, to remain on eye level. Monitoring the results of his words, and currently far from satisfied. “Again, sorry. I’ll warn you next time.” He sucked his lower lip for a moment. “That is to say, I’ll ask your permission. In writing, two weeks in advance. And… sorry. How’s your shoulder, can I massage it, or…? No? No, I see, all right, never mind.” He retracted his hand, and, after a moment’s consideration, shuffled back a few paces.  
  
“It’s just… I’d read about scrolls of windform, but never actually tried one. Levitating invisibly at high speed always sounded like the perfect way to travel. And it  _was_ , for, well. Most of it.” He was smiling, now, gaze drifting into space. “I must confess, I’ve even had… certain…  _fantasies_  about…” The abrupt renewal of Julan’s glare dragged him back down to earth. “Well. Obviously I wasn’t going to suggest… of course not. Sorry. Never mind.”  
  
He straightened up, and took a drag on the kreshweed roll-up he was twitching between his fingers. “By the way, I know you dropped that helm on purpose, so don’t even try denying it.”  
  
Julan finally lowered his arms. “Since when do you smoke that stuff, anyway?”  
  
“Since I needed it to reduce my stress levels from dealing with you, sweetheart. Besides, it gives my hands something to do that isn’t illusion spells.”  
  
Julan eyed the kreshweed, suspiciously. After a while, he sighed, and let Iriel pass it to him, though upon inhalation, he immediately choked, and thrust it back, eyes streaming.  
  
  
A little later, Julan said, out of what had now become a mostly companionable silence: “So.  _Two_ Dremora.”  
  
Iriel’s mouth quirked, before he replied: “Perks of being a Telvanni Mage-Lord, I suppose. Or just not giving a fuck about arcane ethics.”  
  
“Same thing.” Julan cricked his neck sideways with a wrenching pop. Ire didn’t even wince, his eyes glazed and distant. “ _Two_  Dremora, though.”  
  
Julan snorted. “You wouldn’t know what to do with two Dremora!”  
  
“I would, you know.”  
  
“Send them back to Oblivion with proper shirts on, because you’re so arcanely ethical?”  
  
“…Quite.”  
  
Iriel wandered out of the mushroom’s shadow to survey the Tel Aruhn docks again. The ship they wanted was preparing to depart, but they thought it safest to embark at the last minute, to avoid the captain making too many awkward enquiries. The sails were still half-set, so Ire returned to Julan’s side. “Last chance to change your mind,” he told him. “But I really think asking the Urshilaku for advice is best. They play by the rules; Daedra don’t.”  
  
“Yeah.” A sigh. “I just… you were right, last time we made this trip. When you said I was avoiding them. I know what they’ll say, and none of it’s new, but…”  
  
“I know. Don’t worry. I have a plan, of sorts.” Ire found Julan’s hand and squeezed it. “My brain may be a jumbled mess of the fractured shards of my intellect, but it’s at your service. And I have a few ideas that might work.”  
  
“See, you’re not fractured all the time. How’s the magic?”  
  
“About the level it was when I was ten, but it’s something. I suppose perh–”  
  
They froze, as a distant explosion shook the towers around them. Passers by, used to Telvanni districts, merely paused, glanced around for signs of immediate local catastrophe, shrugged and walked on.  
  
“D'you think they–” Julan began, but Iriel shook his head. “Don’t think. Let’s just go. The boat should be ready in a few minutes.”  
  
“What’s in that sack of yours, anyway?”  
  
“Hopefully nothing breakable, after what it went through on our descent.”  
  
“Yeah, well. I guess anything  _not_  in it is gone for good, now.”  
  
Seizing the distraction, Iriel opened the sack from Tusamircil. “Clothes, mostly,” he reported. “Some of them are even yours.”  
  
“Is my ash-scarf there? I’ve been looking for that.”  
  
“No. Because you left that in my room  _before_ , and I burned it.”  
  
“Wh–?! …Oh. OK.”  
  
A snort of laughter from Iriel, as he pulled out a cream silk sleeve. “Look what she’s put in here! As if I’ll need this, where we’re going! Still, no sense saving it for a special occasion, now. I might as well wear it in the Ashlands as anywhere, I suppose.”  
  
“Is my stupid noble shirt in there, too, then? Or… hey, what about my other pair of guarskins?”  
  
Iriel didn’t reply. He had found the scroll. Uneven lettering on rough parchment, fastened with green twine.  
  
Julan saw his face. “Hey, are you…? Look, I know Helende said you should read it, but maybe now isn’t… I mean, what if it’s… are you sure you’re ready to…?”   
  
But Iriel, his fingers helpless as clockwork, was already tugging on the end of the twine.  
  
  
 _To Iriel._  
  
 _I have began this letter four times. Each time I have wrote the wrong words so much I have ended by dropping the paper over the side. This is the last bit of parchement. My mistaiks must all have to stand this time and you must bare them. Purhaps this is rigte and best._  
  
 _I am sorry for my writing being so falty. I hope you may take my menings. I am at sea, 35.7 teills WTW of the Dancing Strait with our nose to the sun and the wind to our back. I have come further than I have bin in all my dawns. But even were the Argerial not with us, I would not let it prevent me now. I dont set myself wiser than the breath of our ancestors, but I am resolvd._  
  
 _Lightbringer knows our course. I can feel the joy of it in the wood. Befour sun rise I had seen more tears than I thouht still left these many years, but now the joy is in me too and I know the stars speak truly and the winds blow wise. It is time to leve. There was a time to stay and keep to old words, but that is ended._  
  
 _She said you are in Morrowind. She said she wrote you. I thouht you was in a Ciirodil jail. I asked why you was out and if they found you was innosent like I thouht. I asked when you was coming home. She said never. She said it made no matter. She said some people carry their prisons inside themselves and so never walk free. It struck me as how she was rigte._  
  
 _I put her a letter in her Astrology folder. She opens it not more than once a week by my eyes. Purhaps it will even pass some moons until she finds it._  
  
 _I dont pretend as I know who you are these dawns be it theif or murderer or both or none. I dont know if your blood runs fair or foul as she says. I only know it runs in me the same, and I would look on what you have made of it. Purhaps as you see no call to find me, but if you will it, and if Auri-El preserve us on this long haul, I mean to reach Ebonheart by your birth month._  
  
 _From [a blotched mess of illegibly crossed out words] Murecano [more crossing out, this somewhat legible]._  
  
  
When Iriel finally found his tongue, it had turned corpse-dry, coating every word in dust. “He… he wrote ‘Murecano of Lillandril’, and then he… crossed out the 'of Lillandril’ part.”  
  
“Is it an apology?”  
  
“Not exactly. I think… he’s trying to tell whether I want one.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know  _anything_. This is more words together than I’ve had from him my entire life.”  
  
As Ire spoke, he rolled the parchment tighter and tighter, and reknotted the twine several times. “Fuck.” He exhaled sharply, and pushed it into the bottom of his bag. “I don’t have time to mess myself up over this, right now. Can you just… hug me really, really, hard for a moment, and then we’ll run for the boat.”  
  
  
  
The Ahemmusa-bound members of the Thieves’ Guild will no doubt turn up again in due course, but as Iriel and Julan leave the Telvanni lands, perhaps some final mention of the others is in order, insofar as details are known, before all trails were lost.  
  
Rissinia recovered from his wounds, and went to seek his fortune (and a better range of cake ingredients) in Cyrodiil.  
  
Fandus changed his name, and settled in Caldera, where he married the governor’s daughter, and entered local politics.  
  
There were rumours in Sadrith Mora that the Altmer woman known as Big Helende was swallowed by a giant beetle, which then flew out to sea, leaving nothing but a trail of maniacal laughter and badly-embroidered cushions. But, people would usually add, this is clearly ridiculous.  
  
Muriel Sette and Erer Darothril simply vanished. But the latter has appeared and disappeared many times in Tamrielic history, and no doubt he will do so again.  
  
  
Back, then, briefly, to a ship, heading north across the Sea of Ghosts, and two tired elves, slumped on the deck.  
  
“How’re you feeling?”  
  
“My head’s cold. You’re all right, you have  _hair_.”  
  
“Yeah, mostly in my mouth, with this wind. D'you want to go below?”  
  
“No.” A pause. “I wish I had that stupid fucking hat he knitted me, though.”  
  
“Maybe he–”  
  
“Don’t. I still don’t know.”  
  
  
A longer pause, as the clouds scudded by overhead.  
  
  
“He offered to teach me to knit, once, forever and ever ago. I couldn’t see the point, since he already made me things, and I had important books to read.”  
  
“No knitting lessons in Sweating Slutbags of–”  
  
“Shut your awful face, I’m remi-fucking-niscing. I… gods, I just… I wish I’d realised he was only trying to find an activity to share with me that wasn’t some outdoorsy thing, which he knew I hated. I thought knitting looked boring, but now I wonder if it’d be soothing, give my fingers something mechanical to do, when my brain stops working.”  
  
“Better than that poisonous stuff you keep smoking.”  
  
“Yes, well. Even if I could knit, everything close to wool I’ve seen in Morrowind is rough and horrible. No doubt it’s made out of scathecraw, or something that used to be inside a beetle.” A snort. “And knowing me, all I’d succeed in making would be one big tangled knot.”  
  
  
North, still north, as the sky began to shade.  
  
  
“D'you want me to shave my head, then, for company?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Sure? I don’t mind. It’s getting too long, anyway.”  
  
“It is  _not_  too long! And don’t you dare shave it. Long hair has its uses.”  
  
Catching Ire’s smirk, but not the reason, Julan slid him a suspicious look. “Oh, really?”  
  
With a sudden grab, Iriel caught a handful, and yanked Julan’s head into his lap. “Really,” he told Julan’s broadening grin. “Now sit the fuck up, I’m going to braid it.”


	183. proof

Iriel had never seen a Daedric shrine before he came to Morrowind, but he had been raised on tales of them. Nestled in his mother’s lap, she’d whispered of sorcerers with red eyes, grey skin and black hearts, summoning Daedra upon Daedra, chained to their will. Commanding the creatures to slit each other’s throats, while the mages wove webs of magic to trap the outpouring of blood and souls, binding them into the rocks of Mundus. Piling them to the black, storm-rent skies in great, eldritch edifices of hatred and malice, twisted temples to depravity and degradation.  
  
It all sounded very laborious, Iriel thought, as he scuffed through the ash towards the fallen obelisk that marked the western edge of this particular architectural atrocity. Still, the effect was impressive. Even half collapsed, and long abandoned by cultists, it cut a dramatic silhouette in the starlight, crimson sigils glowing faintly on every over-angled surface.  
  
Not for the first time, Ire was compelled to lay his hand against the stone, as he reached it. Warm, though the heat didn’t radiate. Magnetic… or perhaps ‘sticky’ felt more accurate, though no residue clung to his fingers, when he finally pulled them away.  _I know my ma was probably talking complete rubbish, but just in case… hello. I hope you’re all right in there, whatever you are._

Sidling between slanted slabs, he skirted the main complex, and made his way towards a smaller cluster of black pillars, its entrance low and discreet, modestly facing the sea.  
  
There was a dead frost atronach on the beach outside. Or rather, the death-shadow of one, its core returned to Oblivion, leaving an outline of glittering salts on the sand. Ire gave it a cursory glance, and turned away.  
  
He stood before the oval door, inlaid with unnerving spiral patterns, ever on the verge of spelling out some soul-rending secret. He put his shoulder against it and shoved. When it didn’t move, he tried again, bracing his feet and whimpering with effort. It gave with a hollow screech, and he staggered inside, spending the last of his strength trying not to trip on the stairs down to the small, underground chamber. “I’m back,” he gasped.   
  
Julan’s hair was a wild silhouette against the buglamp, upright in the bedroll, hand relaxing away from his sword. “Are you OK?”  
  
“Fine. Just tired. Sorry to wake you.”  
  
“I wasn’t asleep.” Julan’s aura of nervous tension lent credence to his words. He was also still dressed, in a kanet-yellow tunic with blue embroidery he’d acquired from Asha-Ammu Kutebani. According to the Velothi legionary, most of his clan-made clothes were too large, his mother always assuring him he would grow into her creations. Twenty years on and no taller, Kutebani had been pleased to find them a good home, saying he spent most of his time in uniform anyway. Julan always scoffed whenever Iriel referred to Kutebani as his friend, calling him a traitorous n'wah who’d sold his honour to the Empire, but he grinned when he said it, and he wore the shirts.  
  
“What happened?” he demanded now, eyes like candle-flames in the macabre shadows of the small Daedric basement they’d colonised.  
  
Iriel was already flat on his back, eyes closed. “Tell you in the morning. Can’t word any more tonight. Peopled too much, all brained out.”  
  
“But–”  
  
“I was right. They set a test.”  
  
“Did th–”  
  
“Gave Nibani lost prophecies. Spent day getting fussed over by Maeli and Zaba, while she did her wise woman… ancestor-contacty… dream-thing. Next day, got Sul Matuul’s decision, but it all took so long, with all these… stupid formalities, and…  I had to share a yurt with a dozen excitable children, meaning I got no sleep, and I almost had to stay another night before I escaped, and…” Feeling Julan’s weight shift closer on the bedroll beside him, he opened his eyes. “And I missed you,” he said, tilting his face to be kissed.  
  
Julan’s lips were warm, but his jaw was tense, questions clenched behind his teeth. Iriel looked at him, then took a long breath. “All right. Make me some tea, and I’ll do my best to tell you everything.”  
  
  
Ire was on his third cup of unsweetened bittergreen tea, and his second mouthful of cold roast nix-meat with frost salts. Julan was shuttling around the room, pretending he had a reason to move that bag two feet across the floor, or that folding clothes was a thing he did, under normal circumstances. Iriel wasn’t fooled, but until he was more coherent, the only thing he could do with Julan’s impatience was politely pretend not to notice it. He gingerly bit off another shred of nix-meat, the salts giving it a sharp, clean tang he could feel in his sinuses.  
  
“Saved you the rest of the frost salts,” Julan said, gesturing to a glittering pile on the slab of stone serving as a table.  
  
“Thank you, but even if I could remember the ratios, I can’t do much without an alembic.”  
  
“If you say so.” A diffident shrug, as he turned away. “You change your mind, they’re there.”  
  
Ire watched Julan’s hunched shoulders, rooting through their sack of possessions for something Ire suspected was completely imaginary. “Did you see any other Daedra today?” he tried.  
  
“Just the atronach. I got bored, so I explored the main complex. Nothing too risky, don’t start. This place is duller than a Redoran tavern. Found out what it’s called, though. There’s an inscription on the central arch - Assurnabitashpi.”  
  
Iriel blinked at Julan’s expectant tone. “Should that mean something to me?”  
  
“You’re the one who’s been hearing all the Velothi, lately. You don’t know 'assurna’ or 'tashpi’?”  
  
“I can’t remember. Tashpi… isn’t that 'wisdom’?”  
  
“No, that’s tushpi. Like in 'Sintushpi’, wise woman.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Tashpi means 'obedience’. Mind you, because it sounds close, you always get elders telling you 'tashpi-tushpi!’, all smug, like they’re saying something deep, when the old s'wits just want you to do as you’re told.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“'Assurna’ means 'bitter’, so 'assurnabi’ means 'more bitter’, or 'very bitter’.”  
  
“Oh… somehow, I thought perhaps it meant 'blessed’.”  
  
“No, that’s 'assarna’. But I guess you hear blessing words a lot in greetings, like 'assuh kal assour’, where it has an 'u’ sound, because it’s a command, so–”  
  
“Ugh…”  
  
“Anyway, Assurnabitashpi means 'bitter obedience’, more or less.” Julan took in Iriel’s blank non-reaction, and sighed. “Never mind. Just thought you might be interested.”  
  
Ire rubbed his eyes, trying not to get frost salts into them. “I’m in no state for language lessons, sweetheart, I’m sorry. Do you want to hear about the Urshilaku or not?”  
  
Julan gave another long sigh, as if Ire had been the one pressuring him all along. “…I guess.”  
  
  
  
“What?” The furrow in Julan’s brow somehow managed to grow deeper still. “You go to this Kogoruhn place, and bring back stuff to prove it, and they’ll give you all their secret knowledge about the Nerevarine cult?”  
  
“Apparently.”  
  
“That’s all? You don’t even have to defeat anything? You could just use invisibility, for all they know, and–”  
  
“It’s a Sixth House stronghold, it’s a test of courage.”  
  
“A warrior’s test, you said, sinnasha bel-yakiran! How is it a warrior’s test, if–”  
  
Iriel sat stiffly crosslegged on the stone floor, enduring the verbal volleys Julan kept shooting across the table-slab. “If you wanted to question them, you should have gone yourself,” he said. “This is a test to prove I’m worthy of the location of–”  
  
“So you say, but how does this prove anything? I don’t get why they’d think it makes you Nerevar, to–”  
  
“They know I’m not fucking Nerevar! But if I follow the rules, they have to let me fail the tests for myself.” Ire slumped onto his elbows. “Honestly, I think they’re enjoying the ridiculousness of it, given the usual level of entertainment in the Ashlands. Nibani even said to me, you’re not the Nerevarine, because the real proof is the moon and stars, which you don’t have.”  
  
Julan’s eyes widened. “The Moon-and-Star?”  
  
“Possibly? Apparently it’s a thing Nerevar had, though none of the elders could agree whether it was supposed to be a birthmark, or a tattoo, or a ring, or an insignia, or–”  
  
“No, it’s a ring! Definitely a ring. It was enchanted to only let Nerevar wear it, anyone else who tried died instantly, so it was the ultimate proof of identity! What else did they say?”  
  
“Only that if I passed the test, they could tell me more, and–”  
  
“They know where it is?!”  
  
“There was something about a cavern sacred to Azura, but that’s all I was allowed to hear.”  
  
Silence, for all of three seconds, then: “I can’t believe they’re going to tell you all this, just because you picked up some stuff in a ruin, how does that–”  
  
Julan lunged upright, his tirade needing yet more pacing to power it. As he did so, his careless elbow sent a plate and knife clattering to the floor, and Ire recoiled into himself like a snail. In a spasm of guilt, Julan sat back down, glaring at the table. He didn’t retrieve the plate.  
  
Then his chin jerked up again. “Are they going to mark you? If they’re initiating you into clan secrets, seems to me they might as well make you Urshilaku for real.”  
  
“They didn’t say.” Ire realised the thing writhing in Julan’s eyes now was envy, could see his thoughts written across his scowling brow:  _You, who don’t even want this, who don’t understand, who could never know what it means to be clan.  
  
_ “I’m only doing this for your sake,” Iriel said, as evenly as he could, wary of stoking the paranoid embers in Julan’s voice. Trying not to seem frightened, because he wasn’t, he told himself, not really. The memories being stirred up were… unhelpful, that was all.  
  
“I know!” Contrition again, for a moment, but frustration still dominating. “I just… I don’t get why they haven’t thrown you out of the camp, for how stupid the whole idea is. I know it doesn’t matter what they think, as long as I get what I need, but… don’t let it go to your head. Remember what’s really important.”  
  
There it was again, that odd flash of… not even pride, really, Ire suspected. A shield of borrowed arrogance, like an insect with threatening eyes patterned on its wings.  _I was going to keep this until later, but…_  
  
“They’ll give you guest-rites,” Iriel said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“If we both pass the test, they’ll give me access to tribe secrets, and they’ll give you permission to enter the camp as a guest. I didn’t want to break their rules, so I asked if I needed to visit Kogoruhn alone, or if I could take someone with me. Then they started asking questions, and I… I didn’t say you were Nerevarine, but I… explained that the reasons you were outcast weren’t your fault, and that… you were really… perfectly…”  
  
Julan’s eyes were suddenly motionless. “That I was what?”  
  
Ire swallowed. “I told them you were Mashti Kaushibael’s son.”  
  
“You  _what?!_ ”  
  
“I told your aunt, and your grandmother about you. I didn’t originally intend to, but… it just sort of happened, and now they’re very excited to meet you.”  
  
Julan looked, frankly, terrified. “But… but I’m not even her son by blood, so–”  
  
“I never specified about blood, so if you want to tell them that, tell them yourself. You also have a very annoying uncle, and three young cousins. The boys are Zantus and… Sunnabal, I think, and the baby is Arrihi, she’s–”  
  
“Why are you doing this?!” Julan’s tone had flipped back to aggressive, but the fear was still there, in his eyes and in the stuttering pauses as sentence after sentence misfired. “What are you… are you secretly trying to turn me from my mission again, making me– giving me–”  
  
“Yes,” said Ire tartly, “secretly, that’s why I told you all about it. How does getting to know your mother’s family turn you from your mission?”  
  
“You think you know what I really need, what will–!”  
  
“Why would getting something you needed turn you from your mission, unless you let it? Why do you think you’re not allowed more than one important thing in your life? Would that be greedy of you? Should I even be here, or–”  
  
Pushed too far, Julan’s defences collapsed. “I’m sorry,” he husked, head dropping forwards, hands reaching out to Ire across the table, stopping short before they touched him. “Please don’t go… please. I’m sorry.”  
  
Iriel put his hands over Julan’s. “What matters,” he said, “is that once Maeli and Talammu got hold of the fact you were Mashti’s, there was no peace until Sul Matuul agreed a test for you, as well. An initiation, of sorts.”  
  
Julan’s head came up, frowning:  _don’t patronise me_. “Guest rites isn’t the same as initiation,” he said.  
  
Iriel shrugged. “An initiation for an initiation for an initiation, perhaps.”  
  
A long silence, during which Ire could hear Julan’s teeth shifting against one another. Finally, he said, almost calmly, “I don’t  _want_  an initiation. You think I’d abandon my mother, and the Ahemmusa, to–”  
  
“Then it’s just guest-rites,” Ire said, trying to halt this line of thinking before it could pitch back into paranoia. “It’s whatever you want it to be.”  
  
“I don’t… want it to be anything, I…”  
  
Ire chewed his lip, unsure quite what was making Julan’s voice grate and catch like that. “Then… don’t meet them,” he said gently. “I was trying to help, but if it’s going to upset you…”  
  
Julan sighed like an avalanche, his head sinking down again, this time right onto the table-top. “I’m sorry. I’m just… today was a… I’m sorry. I don’t deserve you.”  
  
“Shhh,” Ire said, moving around the slab, “come here.” Kneeling beside Julan, he took him by the shoulders, and guided him into his arms.   
  
“I’m still wearing the silk, you know,” he teased, when Julan was slow to respond to his caresses. “I thought you said you couldn’t keep your hands off me in this?”  
  
Somehow, that was the wrong thing to say. Seconds later, Julan stood up, and the next moment, he was clearing the plates from the table, stalking across the room to stack them by the door, ready to be taken out and rinsed in the sea.  
  
“All right,” Iriel said. “Talk to me.”  
  
For a while, Julan only shuffled crockery in silence, but eventually, he said: “It was easier in the city. I thought it was the other way around, but it’s not.”  
  
Ire perched on the edge of the table, and waited.  
  
“I’ve been allowed in camps before. Everyone watching, judging, waiting for you to make a mistake. Warning you, 'careful  _haishan_ , we know what you are. We see you, so you better keep your hands out of our stores and away from our women.’ I know how it’ll be, what they’ll think. What they’ll see, when they look at me.” A half-hearted gesture. “I know it’s stupid, but… at least in the cities, I can get mad about this stuff. Here, I can’t even do that.”  
  
“Because in the city, you’re defending your people, not yourself?”  
  
“Because in the city, they’re wrong!”  
  
Iriel saw it, then, the choking web of worthlessness that had Julan in its grip. Years upon years of threads, Ire realised, that might take as many years to untangle, if he could even find the ends.  
  
_He’s caught so deep. Would contradicting him only makes him resist, trap himself tighter? I can’t keep telling him who he is, he has to see it for himself._  
  
“Julan, I…” _  
  
…love you_. He really was trying to say it more often. After all, it was true; he felt it, green and vital in his chest. But putting it into words always seemed to drain the sap from it, leaving only dry syllables. Dead leaves, bloodless and useless. Or, like now, nothing more than an obvious placation, a cheap, flimsy bandage over a wound far too deep for it.  
  
Julan had turned, and was looking at him: uncertainty, wariness, muted hope.  
  
Iriel rose from the table and slipped off his problematic shirt.  
  
_Trying to solve problems with sex again, Ire?_  a voice in his head tutted at him. _  
  
Shut up, _ he told it,  _different problems require different approaches. I can’t fix his life, let alone in three words, but… some of these knots I might know other ways to loosen._  
  
“Fuck initiation tattoos,” he said. “You know what kind of tattoos would be better?”  
  
Julan didn’t move, but he said: “What?”  
  
“Ones that tell people where you want to be touched.” Ire ran a finger inwards along his collarbone, then slowly down the centre of his chest. “That trace lines along your skin, for others to follow…”  
  
Although monitoring the gradual descent of Iriel’s hand towards the waist of his pants, Julan’s voice was wearily sceptical. “You want random strangers putting their hands on you, do you? Half the time, you flinch when  _I_  touch you.”  
  
Ire smiled. “They might not be in places visible over my clothes. Or… better… what if you could enchant ink, so that it was only visible to one person, or only when you chose it to be? So they’d always know what you wanted. For your information… I’d be nothing but a huge mess of ink, right now.”   
  
When Julan remained impassive, Iriel came closer, and began playing with the beaded neckline of Julan’s shirt. “Perhaps  _you_  might want something here,” he said, one hand moving up to stroke Julan’s cheek. “Or here…” His other hand slid inside the collar.  
  
Julan didn’t object to Iriel’s pawing, but gave him an odd look. “Ire, the whole point of tattoos is to have them be permanently visible to everyone.”  
  
“Fine,” Iriel huffed, dropping his hands, “but all I ever think when I see attractive men with tattoos is how they’d guide my fingers.”  
  
“Think about that a lot, do you?”  
  
Ire thought for a moment he’d screwed up, except he could swear he detected a germ of concealed amusement in Julan’s voice.   
  
“Only when the occasion presents itself,” he said, tone icily neutral.  _If you dare lay into me for looking, I swear I’ll–  
_  
“Has it lately?”  
  
“Why all these questions, what do you care?”  
  
“Just interested.”  _No, you’re setting a trap, but I don’t know what kind._  
  
Iriel gave Julan a hard stare. Julan raised his eyebrows, all innocence. Iriel sighed and conceded defeat. “Fine,” he said, “there’s one in particular I’ve seen a few times on Velothi men. Beginning around the left bicep, then curving from here… to here, along the muscle.”  
  
Finally, finally, a smirk broke out on Julan’s face. “It means he’s married.”  
  
“Well!” Ire pulled away, rolling his eyes. “Thanks for spoiling  _that_  one for me.”  
  
Julan pursued him, grinning now, arms encircling Ire from behind as he leaned up to whisper in his ear: “But you should watch out for a broken dotted line along  _here_. That means he’s curious, and he likes your hair and wants to meet you behind the guar pens at sundown.”  
  
“Fuck you so fucking hard, you vassithscum.”  
  
“Hmm… I’d have to check with a wise woman, but I think that one’d be an angular spiral right  _here_. You should get it, it’d look gre–AAAGH!”  
  
  
The trouble with having sex in Daedric ruins, Iriel considered, was less the chance of interruption by rogue Daedra, and more the risk of unnatural spiritual emanations corrupting your psyche. Or, as he put it,  _acquiring yet another weird kink._  But he was trying to maintain his concentration.  
  
“…h…”  
  
_not just his breathing, watch his brow  
_  
“…Iya…”  
_  
__until his head drops, and–_  
  
“…hh…” _  
  
almost–_  
  
“Stop.”  
  
“Hhh… wh….? Are you OK?”  
  
“Yes, I…”  
  
“D'you want me to get off you?”  
  
“No, I… I just… wanted to prove something.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Never mind, I’ll tell you later. I’m fine, carry on.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“Extremely fucking very. Let me have it, you trashbag.”  
  
  
Example psychic corruption risk: suddenly realising that not only is there a fresco of frolicking Scamps right in your line of sight, the one on the end looks disturbingly like your Bosmer ex-housemate.  
  
  
“…You didn’t come?”  
  
“No, but it’s fine. Later, perhaps.”  
  
“I could–”  
  
“Later. Just hold me.”  
  
“…Yield.”  
  
“Whh…?”  
  
“It’s 'yield’ in Velothi. The slang, anyway. When you come, you yield to someone. Sorath, I yield.”  
  
“Oh gods…”  
  
“What’s so funny?”  
  
“Sorussi eh punussi, haishan!”  
  
“Listen, n'wah, I know telling me 'yield or rot, outcast scum’ is on the romantic side, by your standards, but if we’re in bed, the least you can do is use ilu-azuni with me.”  
  
“Ilu…?”  
  
“I don’t know the right word. Clanspeech? But not just clan, anyone you’re in the same… y'know… side of a thing with. Shared words?”  
  
“Are you seriously trying to fuck me and teach me grammar at the same time?”  
  
“…Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be, it’s… really working for me…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> optional soundtrack: [savages by the indelicates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6A0MqHLoho)


	184. normal

“Bastard.”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“Hh… Trashbag.”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“You say… you love me… but you lie. Hh… You’re a sadistic, bullying–”  
  
“And you’re slowing down again!”  
  
“Go fuck yourself… hhh… right into… the sea!!”  
  
  
High above the Ashlands, the cliff racers circled, their scavenger senses telling them that, one way or another, somebody was about to die.

  
“Ire, you asked me to do this. You said: I’m in appalling physical condition, but I have no motivation. I need someone to force me to–”  
  
“That was past-Iriel, who is an IDIOT, and should not be trusted!”   
  
“Then you said: I’ll scream and cry, but you have to ignore me.”  
  
“Who are you going to believe? Someone right in front of you, or someone who doesn’t exist any more? Who’s vanished into the past, unable to…  _negotiate_.”  
  
“Look, if you have enough breath to talk, you have enough to get to the top of this next dune.”  
  
“I despise you, and all you hold dear.”  
  
“So, you despise yourself?”  
  
“Your point being…?”  
  
“Get moving, n'wah.”  
  
  
  
“OK, you’ve got your breath back now, come on.”  
  
“Sweet Mara, please not yet. I’ll have no strength left for this warrior’s test!”  
  
“We won’t reach Kogoruhn for at least another day, and you can rest up once we get there. Training means not giving up when it starts to get tough!”  
  
“How can you be so cruel? I’m a pathetic vassith!”  
  
“No more than me.”  
  
“You are the picture of Dunmeri manhood. I’m a delicate flower, bruised by the wind!”  
  
“You? You’re the least delicate person I’ve ever met. You’ve endured things I can’t imagine. And I don’t get why you say you’re feminine, just because you’re good at magic.”  
  
“What? Leaving aside the fact I can barely cast a Light spell these days…  _what?_  Why would being good at magic make me feminine?”  
  
“That isn’t what you meant?”  
  
“No! Magical talent proves your connection to the great tradition of your arcane forefathers, to the sages of the fucking ages!”  
  
“Not around these parts it doesn’t. Fireballs are one thing, but anything else is women’s business. According to most warriors, anyway. Mother says women are more in touch with that stuff, because their link to the ancestors is stronger.”  
  
“Is it?”  
  
“I dunno.”  
  
“You don’t think I’m feminine?”  
  
“How d'you mean? You cry a lot, but they say all Altmer do that.”  
  
“Wait, crying makes you feminine, now?”  
  
“It doesn’t where you’re from?”  
  
“Well… I suppose it depends what you’re crying about. But shedding tears over certain types of cosmic sorrow is terribly macho - all the heroes of the Chronicles weep crystalline jewels for verse after verse. Although you have to do it quietly, without noise or mess, all controlled and stoical. It shows depth of soul, they say.”  
  
“What’s your soul, then, a big splashy puddle?”  
  
“At least I  _have_  one.”  
  
“Gods, you’ve been taking insult lessons from Shani. If you ask me, most women are tough as ogrims, I’ve only met delicate ones in books. But then, most women I know are Velothi.”  
  
“Wait, so if women are tough, and I’m tough, aren’t I still feminine, then?”  
  
“Ah, but Velothi men are tough, too.”  
  
“So–”  
  
“So I’m bored of the question, and I don’t know what answer you’re hoping for. Is this your Julan-only-really-likes-girls thing again? You think I like you because you remind me of a girl? You don’t, though. Sometimes you say or do things that are sort of… I don’t know. That might be a certain way if a woman did it, but when you do it, it’s not the same. Because you’re the one doing i–uh… thanks. What was that for?”  
  
“Nothing, your nose was just very cute for a moment.”  
  
“Uh… OK.”  
  
“It’s funny… I’m not sure I’m all that feminine, either. But I always took after my ma, not my pa, and I always felt… I don’t know. That I wasn’t doing manhood properly, somehow.”  
  
“Oh, so who was that handsome sailor who wrestled a boat to shore in a storm, while I cowered and prayed to Azura, because I could swear he looked just like–”  
  
“Sweetheart, it was hardly a storm, and if you recall, I wrecked the boat. Also, I hated every blighted minute of it.”  
  
“Pffft. That just makes it manlier. Enjoying yourself’s for  _girls_.”  
  
“Gods, you’re such a Dunmer, I can barely tell you’re joking.”  
  
“I never joke. Joking’s for  _gir_ –ow!”  
  
“I sometimes wished I were a girl when I was younger. I don’t mean I felt I was one, only that things would be simpler if I were. Or perhaps I just wished I were Firionwe. Later, I wished I could be nothing at all. I wished that about a lot of things, though.”  
  
“And now?”  
  
“I’m still not sure. But it’s… an easier kind of not sure. Gender has its uses, one way or another. I think I’m getting better at navigating it. Choosing what to show, deciding how I want to display it, whether it’s about safety, or particular kinds of communication and signalling.”  
  
“You make it sound like an ash-skipper waving fire-petals in it’s mating dance.”  
  
“Well, yes, that would be one of the uses. Speaking of feathered posers, Zabamund was telling me off for using women’s words in Velothi again. I think he knows I’m doing it on purpose, but he can’t prove it.”  
  
“It does sound… odd.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Yeah, but maybe not how you mean it to. You complain, but doesn’t Velothi do what you just said you wanted to do?”  
  
“What, gendering verbs but not pronouns?”  
  
“You don’t have to label  _yourself_ as male or female, only how you’re doing something, at that moment.”  
  
“So why can’t I use whichever ones I like? Since you only  _have_ two forms.”  
  
“Uh… you can, but… it’s sort of complicated. Some words are always feminine or masculine, no matter who uses them. Hunt bands use male words when they’re hunting, even the women, and a lot of ritual stuff is always done in sintal-azuni, women’s words. In normal speech, people might use the wrong one to be sarcastic, or insulting–”  
  
“To be sexist, you mean.”  
  
“Sometimes. But there’s other meanings, too. It’s hard to explain to non-Velothi, you have to know how it ought to sound, to know why it’s funny if you change it. When I’ve heard you do it, it just sounds like a mistake, or even rude.”  
  
“You’re saying I lack nuance? Subtlety?”  
  
“More like… understanding. See… there  _are_  people who use both forms, but it’s… almost a sacred thing. A role you’re initiated into. Some wise women act as a channel for other souls so much that they get… not confused, exactly, but… shifting. Loosely attached to themselves. So, I’m not saying you can’t, but some people might think you’re being disrespectful if you switch around a lot, especially elders.”  
  
“I… honestly. First Viatrix tells me the Temple make you join the army to be gay, now this. Morrowind is ridiculous. Mind you, it’s better than Cyrodiil, in some ways. Perhaps it was Cyrodiil that got to me most, actually. Everyone there assumed I was feminine, and after a while I embraced it to show I wasn’t ashamed of it, and I’m not, but… really, I don’t feel any more connection to it than I do to masculinity. It’s all nonsense, trying to slot every part of myself into one box or the other. Especially when the boxes make no sense, and people don’t even agree about what goes in which.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m the romantic, right? I’m the one who enjoys taking care of people, and likes children and cute guar and–”  
  
“Children?”  
  
“I, uh– I mean, not as in–”  
  
“It’s all right, you’re allowed to want things I don’t. It’s not like we’re–”  
  
“I didn’t say I wanted them!”  
  
“You do, though.”  
  
“No, look, it’s a bad idea by any measure, even if things were… different. l… it’s just that... sometimes I think about the first time I went to Ahemmusa camp with Shani. And I saw how she acted with her parents, and… it was the first time I wondered if the way my mother was raising me wasn’t, y'know… normal. Sometimes, I think about… I dunno. Forget it.”  
  
“Did she make you go running? That’s definitely not normal.”  
  
“I thought you hated normal. C'mon, one more hill.”  
  
“You’re a horrible, maladjusted freak.”  
  
“I love you, too.”  
  
“What if I get a muscle? Sottilde will divorce me.”  
  
“Move.”  
  
“I’ve changed my mind, I want to be unfit. Heart attacks aren’t such a bad way to go, considering–”  
  
“Move that ass, vassith!”  
  
“OW! YOU SHITBAG, I’M GOING TO–”  
  
“Catch me, then!”


	185. courage

“Well.” Julan yanked his sword out of the half-naked cultist. “At least we know we’re in the right place.” He scanned the plaza of the ruined stronghold. “Anyone else?” His shout echoed across the grey expanse of stone and sky, but there was no response.  
  
“Don’t encourage them.” Iriel was examining his fingertips. A spark arced between them, and he made a face at it. “That really was the best I could do, and he barely even flinched.”

Julan, frowning at the blood on his sword, then the cultist’s crude rag of a loincloth, paused in his calculation of lesser evils. “Are you hurt?”  
  
“No, no. You intercepted him in plenty of time.” Ire let his hand fall limp, and stepped carefully around the corpse. “It just makes me question how useful I’ll be, once we’re inside. It’s all very well for you to claim you only know how to throw yourself in front of things, but I can’t even do that. I can’t even protect  _myself_. This will be far more your test than mine, I’m afraid.”  
  
“You said it was a test of courage, not of killing things,” Julan said. “If I’m going in there with armour and a sword, and you’re going in defenceless, seems like you’re getting tested a lot harder than me.”  
  
Iriel sucked in a breath, and regarded the door to the main complex. Beyond its squat roof, the Ghostfence ran so close he could see tiny bolts of soul-bright energy darting along it like minnows in a stream. “I suppose we’ll find out,” he sighed. “I only hope I’m not a liability.”  
  
“Don’t start that.” Julan gave him a stern look. “I know you can’t do everything you could before, but it’ll be fine. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you.”  
  
“I know, I just wish you didn’t have to.”   
  
“I want to. Now give me a kiss before we have to wrap our faces in all that anti-corprus crap.”  
  
  
  
“Ghh… kh…”  
  
“It’s all right, I’ve got your hair. Oh fuck, mind my boots!”  
  
“Ugh… khh… Sorry, I– ghh… Gah! I knew it’d be Sixth House, thought I was ready, but… Sheogorath, the smell! It’s like that cave me and Tilde found you in! Doesn’t it bother you?”  
  
“It’s… familiar. And unpleasant. But I don’t remember much about that time, so it’s not connected to anything specific.”  
  
“…Lucky you.”  
  
  
  
“What are you doing?! You nearly took my fucking head off!”  
  
“They have THINGS coming out of their FACES and I need them to NOT have THINGS coming out of their–!!”  
  
“YES, BUT PLEASE FOCUS! I’m no swordmaster, but it was a good thing that last one didn’t have eyes, the way you were swinging. And isn’t your shield supposed to cover your body? Warrior’s test, Julan! Act like a fucking warrior!”  
  
“…Right. …Sorry.”  
  
  
  
“No! Nononono, no lying down, get up.”  
  
“I can’t… it’s so cold. I just need to… sleep, and then…”  
  
“It is  _not_ cold, that awful tentacle thing gave you blight! This is what you get for being careless about your mask! No, stand up, idiot! Open your eyes, you can’t sleep here. Stay with me, don’t make me slap you. You have to keep drinking this potion!”  
  
“Pls… let me… sle… OW!! Wh– gllk…”  
  
“Now swallow!”  
  
“…glp…”  
  
“Thank you. And again.”  
  
  
  
“Oh for fuck’s sweet sake. Having to go through the sewers of this accursed place was bad enough, but now the tunnel’s flooded? What Aedra or Daedra did I offend so badly, that now I have to swim through a fucking… what’s wrong?”  
  
“Iya, I can’t. I can’t go through there. Not underwater, it’s like flying but  _worse_ , because you can’t  _breathe_ , it’s all pressing  _in_ on you, and you’re floating, you can’t  _control_ –”  
  
“Shhh, let’s see. It’s dark, but I’m pretty sure I could… yes. Right. I’ll swim both of us through, it can’t be far. If you can use Alteration to keep the water off us a bit, that’ll help, but don’t worry if not, we’ll manage. Don’t think about your breathing, let your amulet take care of it. Just close your eyes and hold on to me.”  
  
“I can’t do it.”  
  
“You don’t need to do anything except trust me. Can you do that?”  
  
  
  
“Azura’s star…”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“We must’ve come the wrong way.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“We’re too deep. We’re not under the stronghold any more, these caverns are different. Look at this rock, it’s volcanic.”  
  
“Isn’t all Vvardenfell vol–”  
  
“Not like this! We’re… we’re on Red Mountain,  _under_ Red Mountain. We came beneath the Ghostfence, in these tunnels, we must have, we’re….here. Here, again.”  
  
“What does that mean, exactly?”  
  
“I… I don’t know.”  
  
“You’re shaking.”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
  
  
“How the fuck did it manage to get darker in here?! I never thought I’d be happy to see a flame atronach. Still, we’re almost done. Two items down, only the shield still to find. Sweetheart? Are you listening?”  
  
“…Huh? What? Sorry, I thought I heard… Never mind.”  
  
“All right. Don’t get distracted, there’s lava up ahead.”  
  
  
  
“Did you… say something, just then?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I… thought not.”  
  
“Are you–?”  
  
“I’m  _fine_. Let’s try this passage.”  
  
  
  
“Ai… That was… close.”  
  
“Oh fuck, are you all right? You’re bleeding.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s just a scratch. Almost wasn’t though. Good thing you paralysed it.”  
  
“Good thing I managed to cast it! It took most of my magicka, too.”  
  
“Thanks. I… ugh. OK. Get it together. This isn’t over. There’s more of these freaks in here, I can feel it. Gah…”  
  
“Are you sure you’re all right?”  
  
“Yes. Well. No. But… yes. Just… made the mistake of letting myself think about it, you know?”  
  
“I… don’t, actually.”  
  
“You can’t think about death when you’re fighting. You have to think about the fight. You can’t let it distract you, let fear affect your judgement.”  
  
“Then don’t, because nobody’s dying.”  
  
“Yeah… you’re right, it’s just… I… don’t know what’s going to happen, when I die. Mother’s got a  _kausagursha_. Sort of. She calls it that, and she says there are spells on it, but… well… it’s a box with my baby teeth in it. Who knows if it even… Tch. Not that it’d make any difference, if I died here. They say if you die on Red Mountain, the Ghostfence traps your spirit there, to howl in the blightstorms forever.”  
  
“That honestly still sounds better than being stuck in a box with your mother.”  
  
“Iya… listen… if I die, you have to–”  
  
“You’re not going to die!”  
  
“No, listen! Please. Promise me you’ll try and do something for her, make sure she’s OK.”  
  
“Your mother?!”  
  
“Please, Iya. You don’t understand, she needs–”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Just–”  
  
“No! So you can’t fucking die here. Now come on.”  
  
  
  
“Aaaargh!”  
  
“Julan! What–”  
  
“Gah!! He’s in my head!”  
  
“Wh–”  
  
“He’s in my… hhh… in my head, I can  _hear_ him,  _whispering_ , breaking into my mind, making me–”  
  
“Sweetheart. Look at me. There’s no one in your head except you. At worst, there are voices in your ear, trying to mess with you. But you don’t have to let them. Right? You tell them to fuck off. Next time they say anything, you just tell them to fuck off, yes?”  
  
“…I…”  
  
“Fuck off. Got it?”  
  
“…OK…”  
  
“Say it with me.”  
  
“…Fuck off.”  
  
“Louder. Tell that deluded old cocknozzle he can’t make you do anything.”  
  
“Fuck! Off!!!”  
  
  
  
“Hhhh… it’s… dead? It’s dead!”  
  
“WHAT THE SACRED SHIT WAS THAT?!”  
  
“We… we killed an Ash Vampire! We actually… we… Malacath!!! WE KILLED AN ASH VAMPIRE!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!! IRE, WE–”  
  
“You killed it, you mean! I’ve never seen you fight like that, it was incredible! I thought he had you cornered, but then your sword tore straight through his neck like it was paper! I did nothing but cower in the corner!”  
  
“Iya. You did  _everything_.”


	186. boundaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IIRC, I listened to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B807CcVxW9U) a lot while writing this. Hiking Through Vvardenfell Mountains Music. Speaking of music, I can't tell you the tune to Julan's horrible song, as it only exists in my head, but suffice it to say, it's very annoying.

The mountains of northern Vvardenfell were an unforgiving place, riddled with caves and gouged with deep, volcanic trenches. The latter, known locally as foyadas, were perilous to navigate, their steep sides granting travellers no escape from swooping cliff racers or marauding kagouti packs. No escape from the impressive acoustics, either.  
  
“Sixty-third came a Bosmer whore, toothy and stout,  
What goes in a Wood Elf’s mouth doesn’t come out!  
Sing ohhh, the loves of Boethiah! The ninety-nine loves of Boethiah!”  
  
It was only their second hour of hiking since breaking camp, but Iriel was already pondering self-targeted Silence spells, or, failing that, the sound-muffling properties of shalk resin.

“A Hist, twenty-eighth, spread its roots for a view,  
At least, that’s what we think it was trying to do!  
Sing ohhh, the loves of Boethiah! The ninety-nine loves of Boethiah!”  
  
More than getting beetle-gunk permanently lodged in his auditory canal, Iriel was afraid of being passive-aggressive and spoiling the mood. Julan was in the kind of high spirits he usually only reached with the aid of at least four bottles. That said, Ire’s tolerance had limits.  
  
“The fourteenth was a Sload with reversible tube,  
The thing about Sload is, you never need–”  
  
“You sang fourteenth already!” Ire couldn’t keep the anguished betrayal from his voice.  
  
Julan glanced over his shoulder. “Did I?” he remarked blithely.  
  
“Yes! I’ve been keeping track! But it wasn’t a Sload, it was something lurid about a Khajiit who was flexible enough to reach any part of his anatomy with his tongue.” Iriel sucked in his cheeks, suddenly pensive. “I’m beginning to understand why Dro'Zaymar didn’t require my company, that night in St Delyn.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Never mind. Are there really ninety-nine verses?”  
  
“‘No, of course not!”  
  
“Oh, thank Mara.”  
  
“There’s far more than that, because if you run out, you make them up as you go along!”  
  
As Iriel closed his eyes and moaned, Julan gave him a condescending look. “Ire, you say filthier things than this all the time.”  
  
“I know, but with these awful tavern songs, I’m always waiting for the next 'hilarious’ thing that’ll hit me somewhere it hurts. Humour like this depends on using other people for its punchlines.”  
  
“Look, the one about the Nord girl with the plaited moustache I got from Sottilde, so–”  
  
“I don’t care!”  
  
“I skipped all the verses about Altmer!”  
  
“I’ve already composed them in my head via guesswork, and upset myself, so you needn’t have bothered!”  
  
“Lighten up, Ire. I sang the bit with the Dunmer who married a guar, didn’t I? Nobody’s safe with this sort of song.”  
  
“Let me try one, then.” Iriel chewed his lip for a while, then sang:  
  
“An Ashlander maid, sacred clit-rings on show,  
They have twelve words for 'fuck me’ and no word for 'no’.”  
  
To his satisfaction, Julan’s face immediately darkened. “That,” he said, “was over the line.”  
  
“EXACTLY!!! Because you know where that line is! Stop pretending you do for everyone else!”  
  
Julan threw up a hand. “OK! Fine! Let’s sing your one about the dead baby in the pond again, that’ll keep our spirits up!”   
  
Iriel watched him march on ahead, skipping over rocks in his path, already humming the opening strains of The Kwama Miner’s Daughter.  
  
Perhaps there was nothing extreme about Julan’s cheerfulness, Iriel considered. Perhaps anyone would appear cheerful in comparison to himself, and the creeping dread that tugged, tar-like, at his heels with every step.  
  
_His spirits require no support, while mine are beyond salvaging._  
  
_What are we doing? What am I doing? What am I letting him do?_  
  
  
“You’re certain we’re in the correct foyada?” Iriel ventured, when they stopped at midday to eat. He knew Julan’s answer would be 'yes’, regardless of truth, but that was why he’d asked - a desire for reassurance at any price. Every grey, lava-bitten channel snaking down from Red Mountain looked identical to him.  
  
“Of course!” Julan, grinning broadly, began indicating landmarks with a stick of scrib jerky. “I’ve spent my life in these mountains! Those pointed rock spires down there are Airan’s Teeth, so this is Yamus bel-Shannarai, the Valley of the Wind. It’s obviously the 'teeth of the wind’ that stupid riddle was talking about.”  
  
Ire allowed himself to be reassured. It was true, they were only a couple of hours south-west of the Grazelands, and from there, it was only a few more miles along the coast to the summer location of Julan’s mother’s camp. To Iriel’s relief, Julan had expressed no desire to visit.  
  
“I’ve never heard of any secret shrines to Azura around here,” he was saying. “I’d have thought Mother would know about it. But I guess that’s why it’s secret.” He rolled his eyes. “Sheogorath knows why that wise woman had to make it a whole stupid riddle. We passed the test, didn’t we? These old women love messing with your head for the attention, but you shouldn’t encourage them.”  
  
“I was just relieved she didn’t want to stick needles in me,” said Ire. “You can do all the talking, next time. You have a promise of guest rites, after all, it was your choice not to come with me to–”  
  
“I know, get off my back!” Julan was still grinning. “I want to have this proof from the cavern, first. Then I’ll go to the Urshilaku and show them, explain that I’m the Nerevarine, and you were only helping me.” He set his jaw at the distant horizon. “I’ll show Mother, too.”  
  
_You could still say something. You could repeat what Zainsubani told you about his father, try to–_  
  
_He knows! He’s heard it and rejected it, so all you’d be doing is telling him you believed the word of a stranger over his! Faith, Ire. You said you were going to have faith in him._  
  
_Yes, but… ugh! Walk, just walk._  
  
  
The foyada seemed eternal. It ran broadly south, but as the incline increased, it began a slow, fern-frond curl around a huge rock spur. They scrambled uphill through flowering heather, swarming with tiny copper moths that rose like dustclouds as they passed. As the day wore on, Iriel’s exhaustion grew, but Julan’s optimism remained undentable.  
  
“I’ve been thinking about this guest-rites thing,” he said, at one point. “One of the most well-known prophecies is called The Stranger. That’s where the famous line about Incarnates comes from: 'many fall, but one remains’. But it also has lines about the tribes welcoming a stranger to their hearth. And guess what? The Velothi word for stranger, hlarmut, can also be translated as guest, and that’s the word used in guest rites!”  
  
His eyebrows leapt as he beamed into Iriel’s impassive face. “So me receiving guest rites might be part of the prophecy! For the first time in forever, I’m making real progress!”  
  
Iriel made a noncommittal noise and faked the need to focus on the placement of his feet.  
  
_I said I wouldn’t stand in his way._  
_I said I couldn’t protect him by showing him I doubted him._  
_I said I had to trust him, even when he’s wrong._  
  
_Noble sentiments, so idealistic. Bodu saw through that guarshit straight away. What use is any of it, if he’s dead?_  
  
  
In the afternoon, they climbed above the ashline. Crossed into the high places, where the storms whipped constant torrents of ash from the crater of the volcano. They had goggles from the Urshilaku with shalk-wing lenses and tight leather straps. Ire wrapped his blue silk scarf around his nose and mouth, followed by another less permeable one of soft, grey racerskin. Even Julan was forced to cover his face, though Ire could still hear him humming, whenever the wind dropped.  
  
They clambered over piles of scree, and verdant explosions of bittergreen. Sometimes, a gust of wind would catch Iriel unawares, and he’d have to cling to the nearest bristling tendril until Julan rescued him, grateful his netch gauntlets kept the spines out of his skin.  
  
_Everything is so fragile, so precarious. Any moment, something could tear him from me. Every step we take, a crack could open up between us. Could swallow either of us… or both._  
  
_We killed an ash vampire, but we almost died a dozen times and it’s only going to get worse._  
  
_Where’s the line, Ire? He knows. He stood across it, that night you tried to attack the Council Club. You lecture him about boundaries, but where are yours, now? You always do this. You fuck things up one way, then you overcorrect too far in the other direction. You’re not “having faith” in him, you’re enabling him. And if you keep going, you’re going to watch him die._  
  
_But what else can I do?_  
  
  
In the crags, they passed through a cliff racer nesting ground, empty now the chicks had all fledged. Iriel felt small bones crunch beneath his boots, and forced his gaze upwards, stomach turning. Julan was already bouncing over the top of the next ridge.  
  
_I don’t know how to help you. I’ve found plenty of ways not to do it. I don’t want to mock you, deceive you, lecture you, patronise you, manipulate you, order you, guilt-trip you. I won’t have you feel my love as a chain around your wrist, dragging you from your hopes and dreams into cultureless domesticity, like Shani tried to do._  
  
_Is this all that’s left, letting you pull me into the mouth of hell with you? I don’t want to watch you die, but if the choice is this, or leaving you to die alone… I owe it to you. I owe it to you to be wrong about staying, instead of wrong about going._  
  
  
“Huh.” Julan had stopped, and was scratching his head. The foyada had ended in a narrow clearing, rock faces on all sides. There was no sign of a cavern, or an opening of any sort. “I don’t get it.” He pushed up his goggles, the cliffs largely shielding them from the ash. “It must be here, but we’ve checked the entire length of the valley.”  
  
“Can we rest?” Iriel’s bag had slipped from his shoulders, and he looked ready to drop into the ash next to it. Julan nodded, and they settled themselves against the rock face at the foyada’s dead end. Ire loosened his scarves, and shook out the ash, until it made him cough so much he stopped.  
  
Julan passed Ire the waterskin, and waited while he drank, watching with such intensity, it was all Ire could do not to choke. He settled for spilling it down his chin, and shooting Julan an exasperated glance. Julan returned him a smile of pure affection.  
  
“I know this has been hard on you,” he told Iriel. “And I don’t just mean the climbing, I mean everything. I know I’ve been hard on you, too, and difficult to live with. I want to apologise, and to say… you don’t know how much it means to me, that you’re here.”  
__  
_Please let a crack in the rock open up, because I want to crawl into it._  
  
“I could do this.” Ire heard Julan’s voice, and dimly felt him cradling his hand, through his gauntlet and haze of impotent despair. “I could actually succeed at my mission! I never felt this way before, never in my whole life. It’s amazing, and it’s all because of you.”  
  
_Oh. Great._  
  
“I never imagined that anyone would do this for me, would share my burden like this. You’re so strong, Iya, far more than me, and far more than you realise. I love you so much.”  
  
Ire knew he couldn’t respond without crying, and then having to explain why. And then falling apart completely, begging, drenching Julan in guilt, exchanging all his confidence and devotion for doubt and resentment again, and to achieve what? A temporary victory, at best.  
  
He gritted his teeth and looked away, into the rising blush of the sunset, at the lone star appearing over it.  __  
  
_Vasa bel-Azura._  
  
_Viatrix said love and faith were the same thing. That faith let her follow, when reason failed. But… she was talking about a god. What do gods ever have to lose?_  
  
The mountain groaned, and, as if answer to his prayer, he felt the rock behind him shift.  
  
  
Iriel might have wondered how the liminal boundary operated, without a monk and a pulley, but at that moment, there was nothing in his mind but a sense of hollow inevitability. They walked down the passage hand in hand, a distant, submarine glow luring them into the depths. Julan was vibrating with anticipation, Iriel numbly docile.  
  
The cavern that opened around them was a temple. Luminous, numinous, stalactites and stalagmites ringing it like pillars. In the centre, surrounded by green and violet mushrooms that shone like altar candles, was a kneeling female figure, carved from the rock.  
  
Julan’s eyes were fixed on the statue, his mouth slack. “Azurammu,” Ire heard him breathe.  
  
Azura’s stone eyes were cast down into her lap, where her hands were resting, upturned and open. Towed nearer, Ire saw lichen patterning her skin and moss softening the folds of her robe.  
  
Julan clutched convulsively at his arm. “Look!” Iriel followed his gaze. She had worshippers. Around the edges of the cavern, motionless figures were huddled at stiff angles, bent at the knees and neck.  
  
“They’re bodies!” Julan let go of Iriel, and moved towards the nearest form. “This one’s been given full death-honours… more than for a khan, even. Are they heroes, legendary champions? I’ve never seen soul-bindings this complex.” He began going from corpse to corpse, squinting and gasping.  
  
Iriel hadn’t moved, was still hovering at the centre of the cavern, paralysed by discomfort and dread. The statue loomed over him, all benign expression and benevolent hands. He hated it with every fibre of his being.  
  
There was something glinting between the statue’s cupped hands. A silver band. He leaned closer. A silver band… with a moon and star on it.  
  
He almost shouted to Julan, but stopped himself. Something was bothering him about the ring, and a second later, he realised what.  
  
It wasn’t enchanted. It was impressive to look at, the six-pointed star nestled into the elegant curve of the crescent moon, but it wasn’t magical. Not imbued with any sort of spell, let alone a soul-scanning murdercurse.  
  
_I could be wrong. Daedra can be subtle, after all, and my judgement isn’t what it was. But… I can still sense the arcane, and there’s simply nothing here. I can feel the amulets on the corpses across the cavern, but not this ring._  
  
_Nibani Maesa said that to gain the proof of Nerevar, I had to find the moon and star. But if she knew the cavern was here… why is the ring still here? Why hadn’t they already retrieved it, kept it safe? Unless… it’s just another sinyesh, a test-thing to retrieve._  
  
Iriel stared again at the circle of metal in the statue’s hands.  
  
_How can it be a proof, if it’s not magical? She must have known it wasn’t magical. That anyone could wear it, and–_  
  
He saw a trap. He saw a glittering snare. A manacle, to drain freedom, and replace it with blind, dutiful obedience.  
  
“Mephala!” Julan’s voice drifted from somewhere behind the statue. “There’s even more bodies! And they must be really powerful spirits, the amount of bone charms holding them to this place is… incredible. Iya, I think this place is a tomb for failed Incarnates!”  
  
He saw a poisoned chalice.  
  
_If I’m wrong, and it is cursed somehow, it will kill him instantly. If I’m right, and it isn’t, it will cement his confidence, and lock him on his course. Make him the willing dupe of this reborn soul shell game, or whatever it is these wise women are playing at._  
  
_Either way, it kills him. Quick or slow, it kills him._  
  
The stalagmites and stalactites were no longer the pillars of a temple. They were ranks of pointed teeth, ready to snap closed.  
  
“What have you found?” Julan was approaching from the back of the cave, and Iriel’s pulse hammered against his throat. Too late now to hide it, lose it, pretend it had never existed.  
  
He suddenly heard Viatrix, again. _'Some things They did so we might not have to. So we might receive the lesson, without paying the cost.’_  
  
Iriel picked up the ring. At the flash of silver, Julan’s eyes went wide. When he saw what Ire was doing with it, they went wider still. “No,” he said hoarsely, beginning to run, catching his shoulder on a stalactite, forcing past it. “STOP!!”  
  
_This time, I chose it. I betrayed him with both eyes open._  
  
The Moon-and-Star slid past Ire’s knuckle, and settled around the base of his left middle finger. And nothing happened.  
  
_There. I was right. I know it’ll hurt, to find it was all meaningless. That he’ll be disappointed it’s not the proof he wanted, that it’s been nothing but a huge set-up. At best, he’ll be furious with me for taking the risk. At worst, he’ll despise me forever, for sabotaging his destiny, and he’ll have the right. But at least he might live to do it._  
  
Ire began releasing the breath he’d been holding. Then he saw Julan’s face, and it froze in his chest.  
  
Julan came towards him. Silently, slowly as if underwater, his eyes fixed on the ring on Iriel’s hand. When he reached it, he stopped. Took Ire’s hand in his, gently, reverently. He ran his fingers along Iriel’s knuckle, then across the ring. Then down the length of Ire’s finger, and off. Iriel couldn’t speak, but when Julan looked up, their eyes met.  
  
There was no trace of anger in Julan’s face. Only something of the condemned man, in the split second after the trapdoor opens, and before the noose pulls tight. He nodded slowly. He squeezed Iriel’s fingers. Then he ran from the cave.  
  
“WAIT!!” Ire’s self-possession returned, as Julan reached the cavern entrance. Stumbling down the tunnel after him, Ire saw the stone door begin to grind downwards. He launched himself towards the shrinking wedge of rose-gold light. “COME BACK YOU IDIOT IT’S NOT ENCH–!”  
  
The rock wall descended the last few feet just as Iriel hit it face-first. 


	187. mother

_Azurah tells you, her favoured child, who is no longer a mewling elfchick, and who has learned to keep secrets from Azurah, and so Azurah tells you._  
  
_In the beginning were the twenty years of ancient days, the honoured antecedent, uncontrolled blood summoned blood to condone itself, in a frenzy of was and must-not. The Tribal law of all true Houses, where children were needed to share our happiness, which is to say, the shadow of the sacrificial concept. You were needed, to give birth to an earlier life, destined to merge with the simulacrum of your mother. An imitation of belief, more destructive than a flock of flaming larks. A ghost touch, only granted to keep one’s tenderness intact, and which the ninety-nine loves of Sheogorath know never really happened._

 _The First Secret is the true way to make children. Lorkhaj made a box with an illusionary flower. Nerevar pledged upon the bones of his mouth. Boethiah relieved himself of Azura, whose sphere is the moon-shadow of the Indoril. Vivec’s children will bury the needle at the five corners. They have learned from your predilections, broken like false fathers of Mystery, mothers turning somersaults inside their clockwork eggs, weeping for brass and pain. All singing, “In caverns dark, Fadomai gave birth today.”_  
  
_The Eighth Walking Way is through the ears of the netchiman’s wife. Remember the value of her womb. Trinimac was built there, against lost maps, there, where scoffers scoff. Surely, there is a proverb hidden in this solution. The colours run like children. This is the pearl - the seed of rebellion which, when unravelled, becomes the capital, the sacred city, bereft of the symbols of Mastery, and tide-predicted to share their doom._  
  
_Ten Daedra came a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea, made from the salt tears of the feminine Altmer who can gather no seeds in shame-flooded fields. Therein is love’s premonition, when Ayem sighed from Mercy’s throne: “To whom must I give birth, now? If you don’t want me to mother you, stop requiring mothering!” Similarly, an oft-used ingredient in childbirth is the gift of a world where dreughs took pity on the constellation of Vivec’s mother. And then the eleven gates, through which relationships produce hour-later exasperations, regrettably fashioned restrictions, riddles laced with cornered spheres and bitter obedience._  
  
_The Forty-First Trial is the Test of Padhome. Many touchstones try the Lattice, and Kagrenac fought for secrets, leaving a powerful thing in ash, an archaic veneration of the value in metal, the revelation of the hole closed up, and it is reborn, the Hortator of the immutable. Nirni is a glimmering rope through the House of critical harvest._  
  
_Eighty-two, the number of Veloth and sundering, and of the wise, who may find one destiny inside another. The Dwemer said: “Go, loosen your significances, broken like water. It is raining now, and so it means nothing!” Love is the deceit of my heart springing forth from Ahnurr’s anger, giving birth to One-Clan-Mother-Under-Moon-and-Star, from first knife to last break._  
  
_Six hundredth curse, Curse-of-Metaphors, of rituals and skies choked black, and of forests wet and female. Yffre said, “Poor Nirni, stop your tears. Azurah will take the finger of Mafala, and channel it to wring secrets from her dead child’s hand. Her eye is shaped like a challenge, clawed like hunger, red with biting, wet with willing weal and woe._  
  
_Sermon One Thousand and One. The counsellors of twilight, known dances and the gatekeepers of the moons offer instructions to honour the Altmer. NIRN, LHKAN, RKHET, THENDR, KYNRT, AKHAT, MHARA and its aftermath. They gift their strange son-daughter with the ability to hide behind their shape, to speak riddles to the ash-marshes and to misinterpret anew beneath tomorrow’s sum._  
  
_Vuh maeli, rilourbibi. All shall be as Azurah tells you._  
  
  
  
Afterwards, he only remembered the light. Of the rose-gold light, expanding across his mind as everything else went black.  
  
No, not only the light. He remembered his rage. How it screamed through him, crackling outwards like a shock-spell, clean and pure and bright.  
  
He had the strangest feeling he’d been back in his childhood bedroom, in the hymnshell pink cottage by the docks, feeling the heat rise in his chest, as his mother railed against Syonilis through the reed-screen wall. Sat rigid on the edge of his bed, clenching his fists till they ached, till the tension collapsed in on itself, and he was outside his body, watching himself cross the floor and slide open the partition. Watching her turn, stunned into rare silence by the sight of her child wearing a face she’d never seen before.  
  
_How dare you. How dare you use him like this. He’s worth a thousand of you, you salt-pickled bitch._  
  
_You pretend you’re so benevolent, that you know what’s best for everyone, but you don’t care. You just want to be right. The moment anyone questions your wisdom, you tear into them like a shark. I think you’re jealous of us. I think you’re scared we might figure out we don’t need you any more. That nobody needs you._  
  
_How many more people are you going to throw away, how many more lives will you curse and destroy, just to prove your point? None of it will fix who you are._  
  
_Admit it. Admit you fucked up, for once, get past your world-crushing arrogance and see things clearly. Understand that this is about you, not him, and not me._  
  
_I know who I am. Who he is. You don’t get to change that, you don’t get to choose. You don’t get to look at my blood, or my stars, or your curdled idea of my destiny, and tell me any different. And you don’t get to judge us, to decide which of us is worth your protection or your punishment. There’s no choice to make. Whatever he is, I am too, and we want nothing from you, least of all your opinion._  
  
_Fuck you. Stick each and every one of your plans up your dried up old cunt. You’re pathetic. I hate you. I hope you hate me. I’ll never be what you want me to be, and I’m glad, because at least if you despise me, perhaps I’m worth something, after all._  
  
  
When Iriel woke, his eyes were dry, but his throat was raw. The cavern door, twelve hours on in its sacred cycle, nudged him into awareness as it shifted against his head, and dawn seared open his eyelids.  
  
He half-crawled, half-rolled out of the cave and collapsed in the ash.  
  
_Hey,_  his body prompted,  _your hand hurts._  Unclenching his left fist, he found the Moon-and-Star, still on his finger, but twisted and crushed bloodily into his palm, sharp points deep his flesh. He whimpered, and found whimpering itself was painful. Careful probing of his face indicated his nose and right cheekbone were swollen.  _Could have been worse. Could have lost another fucking tooth._ He almost laughed - or sobbed, he honestly wasn’t sure -  but either way, it hurt, and he suppressed it.  
  
He stood, and his head blurred grey for a moment, mottled shapes blooming before his eyes.  
  
He knew it was pointless to scream Julan’s name, but he did it anyway, until the pain from his nose and throat risked overwhelming his fragile consciousness. Panting, struggling for balance, he listened to his voice echo along the foyada. When the wind finally swallowed it, he held himself still, forced his breathing quiet. Then he saw the tracks in the ash, scuffed but identifiable.  
  
An ashstorm was brooding in the peaks, but for now, the air was clear. His bag was against the cliff where he’d left it - as was Julan’s. He shouldered both, and began to walk.  
  
  
He lost Julan’s tracks when the ash-strewn foyada gave way to the hard-beaten dirt of the northern badlands, but it didn’t matter. By then, he knew where he was going.  
  
  
He marched long into the night, pausing only to shout abuse at any constellations that dared show themselves through the clouds. After tripping over one shalk too many in the dark (i.e. one), he slept, fitfully, in the doorway of an abandoned mine. At first light, he began walking again. He kept the waxed sackcloth he’d found to wrap himself in, which was fortunate, because as he reached the Grazelands, it started to rain.  
  
  
When he reached Mashti’s camp, it was coming down in sheets. Driftwood and decaying refuse lay in sodden heaps on the beach, untouched for what looked like months. No life, but a curl of smoke above the largest yurt.  
  
Julan’s yurt was unoccupied, so he approached the other. Bound to their sticks, the skulls dripped mournfully at him. "Don’t give me that look, I’m a mabrigash,” he informed them, pulling the sackcloth tighter around his bruise-swollen face. “Can’t you tell?”  
  
Something blocked him, when he tried to push through the guarskin flap, something low and solid that made a guttural sound when his foot collided with it. He paused, hearing movement inside the yurt, shuffling and heavy. When nothing more happened, and all fell silent again, he went inside.  
  
Mashti Kaushibael towered before him, sickly green magelight at her breast casting her face into weird highlights and oblique shadows. Her black hair was a tangled knot behind her head, and her eyes were stark and glassy. As they focused on Iriel, they widened, and her entire body stiffened.  
  
“Outlander.” She was straining to deepen her voice, to make it echo and menace, but she had no breath for it, and it emerged as a croak. There were sweat-drops on her brow, shifting in the light, and he saw she was swaying, her head brushing the top of the ceiling’s domed arch.  
  
_She’s taller than me! She wasn’t this tall, before! She was almost a foot shorter than Julan, so–_  Then he saw the legs of the stool, visible beneath… not even a robe, he realised. Her lower body was draped in a threadbare blanket.  
  
“Out…lander,” she rasped, again. “How dare… who… y…”  
  
Her eyes rolled upwards, her face went slack and he barely managed to catch her as she fell.


	188. despair

She screwed up her face, when he tied back the door-flaps, but didn’t protest the sudden onslaught of sunlight and fresh air. Not that Iriel would have listened. The atmosphere inside the yurt was unbearable, reeking of decaying herbs, unwashed linen and a sour, acidic undertone that permeated everything.  
  
Once he’d laid her flat, Mashti had soon writhed and croaked back into consciousness. Now she was hunched at one end of her sleeping mat, watching him from inside a threadbare cocoon of blanket. At first, her eyes had been those of a cornered animal, but now they held only weary resignation. Every so often, they flickered to the wooden cup he’d set before her.  
  
“It’s just tea,” he informed her, from a stool against the opposite wall. “You saw me pour it from your own kettle, over your own fire. Now, let’s try this again. Where is Julan?”

“I don’t know.” There was no defiance in it, no anything. But he detected a lack of finality, in her last syllable, and let the silence spool out between them.  
  
“He came here.” No colour in her voice whatsoever. “I told him everything. He allowed me no choice in the matter.” Her gaze regained a sliver of its previous steel. “You know, too, I suppose.”  
  
“About his father?” Iriel nodded. “I’m not…” He paused, massaging his eye sockets. “I’m not even angry any more. I just want to know why. Why you were so set on pushing him off this cliff of lies.”  
  
A flash of petulance: “Where else was I to push him, then?”  
  
He couldn’t dignify that with a response, beyond a choked noise and an incredulous stare. She stared back, unrepentant. “We were outcast,” she stated blandly. “His father would not, or could not, acknowledge him. How else to give him a thing to value in himself? Please, if you are so wise, then tell me what I could have done instead.”  
  
“You could have–” Disgusted by his inability to complete the sentence, Ire lapsed into grimacing silence.  
  
Mashti observed his struggles dispassionately for a while, then her gaze drifted, anchorless. “I birthed him in grey rain with mudcrabs for midwives,” she said, in a voice like dust. “A barely grown thing, knowing nothing and frightened out of my wits. He cried, and I looked at him, and I knew I had nothing to give him. I was an empty shell, who could not even die, because he chained me to the rock of this world. I hated and loved him both.” She compressed her flaking lips, shifting them against each other. Hair plastered her cheeks in damp, stringy webs.  
  
“It was… a game, at first. A way to tell a child why he had no father, why he would always be different, always alone. A way to not blacken his heart with my hatred and suffering, a thing to feed him on, that was not despair.” Her eyes settled on the cup before her. A hand emerged from the cocoon to trace the rim with a twig-thin finger.  
  
“In truth, I did not expect that it would last so long. I believed that in time, his father would… surely…” She shrugged, and her blanket slipped, though she seemed not to notice. “When it became clear that would not happen… I came to think… why not him? He was strong, he was brave. I had learned from Nibani Maesa what prophecies were for. That they were to make heroes, not find them. I still believe he could have done it, had he only had more faith. I tried to keep him from doubt, from distraction, bad influence.” Her brow furrowed. “I did not do enough.”  
  
Iriel jerked forwards. “You did too much! You gave him a lifetime of second-guessing himself, of doubting his perceptions of what was true! Your lies and manipulation left him unable to trust himself about anything!”  
  
He expected defensive fury, but received only a long look, filled with an increasing amount of misery. Finally, a slow nod. “I know that I have been a bad mother to him.”  
  
 _Don’t say that like it’s an answer,_  a furious voice spat, in his head.  _If you knew, it makes it worse, not better._  Ire chewed his lip.  _That may be true,_  he told Shani,  _but sometimes that kind of knowing is no help at all._  
  
“The second worst I’ve ever met,” he told her, almost gently. “I get the impression he spent more time parenting you, than you ever did him.”  
  
Another nod. “I could not do everything I should have done. I hoped… the prophecies would be enough, when I could not be.”  
  
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. He needed such simple things from you, but you had to complicate everything.” Ire sighed. “It’s so dreadful that I understand completely. Thank fuck the Aurbis never engineered the joke of me being a parent. I might even have pushed you and my ma into third place.” He leaned his forehead into his hands, elbows on knees. “At least you realise it, which is more than some will ever do.”  
  
She picked up the cup and wrapped both hands around its steaming warmth. “Far too late. I have lost him now, lost him forever.”  
  
“Quite possibly. But that’s up to him, not you. Where did he go, Mashti? He must have said something.”  
  
“He… he was so quiet, when he came here. He never even raised his voice. He looked so much like his father. And like his father, he will never come back to me.”  
  
“But where did he  _go?_ ”  
  
She looked up wildly. “He asked me why I killed him! He put a sword to my throat, and asked me why I murdered Han-Sashael!” Her claw-like nails dug into the cup.  
  
“What did you say?”  
  
“How could I respond to such a question? All those years raising him, reduced to this! He says I gave him nothing! Nothing but lies! And now he no longer believes anything I tell him! Every dark rumour is true now, even this! This is what he thinks of me!” Air rasped horribly in her throat, her face choked with anguish. She took a mouthful of tea, coughed, then took another.  
  
“Listen,” Iriel hissed “I don’t even care if you killed him. Honestly, his pa sounds like a complete shitheel. All I care about is–”  
  
“I danced for him.” Her eyes were wide and terribly bright, her breathing quieter now, but fast and shallow. “When he came with his men, to make trade agreements with my father. All the girls, we performed a sacred dance, before the evening meal. We only called it sacred to justify its place in clan-memory, but it was sensual and beautiful, and what could be more sacred than that? My mother disapproved of it. She was not Velothi, but a high-born Housewoman, taken hostage in a raid on travellers. A Redoran, always prattling of my ‘honour’. I thought her a fool.” She was sweating again, and as the blanket fell from her bony, rag-wrapped shoulders, the strange, astringent smell grew stronger, filling the air.  
  
“He came to my yurt that very night. I was afraid at first, but I did not wish to offend this great khan, my father’s guest. He was charming, handsome. I liked him far better than the man they had chosen for me. When he lay naked in my bed, and I told him I was daughter to the ashkhan, a shadow passed across his face. Then he smiled, and said that it could not be helped. That I had stolen his heart at first sight. That he would make me his bride, so long as we left now, in secret. Corners take me, but I believed him. I was so very young.” A sigh, a shake of the head so brief it looked more like a nervous twitch.   
  
“By the time we arrived in the Grazelands, I was deeply in love, and stunned by the beauty of my new home. I was happy, too happy. I soon learned the truth: my beloved was already married. He wept, and begged my forgiveness. My beauty had bewitched him, he had lost his wits, his wife did not understand him, he would make things right. Of course, he could not. But I loved him - and in any case, I could not return home. So I accepted everything he said.” She bowed her head over the cup, rolling it between her hands.  
  
“He told the tribe that I had come to train as a wise woman. His wife was suspicious, but she had no proof. We met in secret… and then, in time, his wife had proof enough. He never said one word in my defence, when she wove her lies, to cast me out. Not one word.” She took another long swig from her tea. “Now Julan believes her, too. Even dead as she is, she has stolen my son from me.”  
  
“Who has?”  
  
Her chin shot up. “Ahmabi! His wife, who hated me, whose jealous rage made him drive me out of the camp! Who spent her life weaving rumours about me, until they all believed it, when she told them I killed him!”  
  
“It wasn’t only her rumours, though, was it? Rakeem saw you follow them into the cave.”  
  
“Yes.” She shrank into herself again, head dropping. “I had been watching. Such an obvious trap, I scarcely believed even Sashael could be so foolish. I knew the horrors that lurked in that cave, creeping along the underground paths from Red Mountain, bringing the blight into our lands.”  
  
“You claim you were trying to  _warn_ him?”  
  
“I was too late. I only added a corpse to the count - the boy outside the cave. He would not let me come near him, and, in his blind fear of the mabrigash, forced me to defend myself. Inside… Sashael’s men were all dead, and he… he had forged deeper, lost in a haze of slaughter, unaware he was the last one standing. I ran and ran through caves full of dead things, men and Daedra, but it was a tangle of darkness. I heard him, dying, but I could not reach him. Could not even find his body.”  
  
“If not you, then who? Was it even a trap, or merely an accident?”  
  
“I do not know. What does it matter, now? He is gone, and Ahmabi is gone too, died of grief, they say. Perhaps, rather, she died of guilt at what she did to me, though I doubt it. And I cannot think she killed him, either, for she never would have given him up willingly, and why would she need to? She had already won.”  
  
“Then–”  
  
She hunched in a ring of fallen blanket, a thin grey figure in a thin grey shift. “Believe me, or do not believe me, I no longer care. It is the truth - I am sick of secrets. I have lost the last thing it is possible for me to lose. I have lost my son.”  
  
“But where? You must know where he might have gone.”  
  
“It matters little where he went. He will never forgive me.”  
  
“So what?” Ire couldn’t keep the sharpness from his voice, this time. “Don’t push that onto him. Why are you still making him do all the work? Never mind whether he forgives you, how can you help him now?”  
  
“What I can do? He is so angry with me.”  
  
“Good! He’s spent his life full of anger, with nowhere to put it. Let him direct it somewhere it belongs.”  
  
“I cannot bear it.”  
  
“Guarshit! You asked what you could do, and there it is. You can bear it. You can allow his feelings to be more important than yours, for once, you can let him be angry with you. That’s something you can do for him.”  
  
“He will hate me forever.”  
  
“Perhaps. If that’s what he needs to do, you have no right to complain. Or perhaps, if you’re sincere about making things right, if you give him space, and demand nothing of him, there may come a time when you can build a new relationship, as adults.”  
  
A brief convulsion shook her, and she dropped the remains of her tea, spilling it. “He… he said I had denied him the chance to know his father! That I should have told him the truth, while Sashael still lived!” She was almost laughing, panting for breath between sentences, her teeth bared and stained with green. “Denied you, I said! What have I denied you? Only the chance to be rejected and reviled, as I have been! If you would tell me of my sins, then tell of his as well. He denied you, not I. He refused you as his son, I only spared you the pain of knowing it!” She gasped, swayed, and fell sideways onto her bedroll.  
  
Exhausted by her theatrics, Iriel made one last attempt, moving to kneel at her side. “Mashti, please. If you won’t help him, at least let me try. Where did he go?”  
  
Only her eyes moved, swivelling towards him. “He said… that he was going to find his father.”  
  
“What?” Ire sprang to his feet, holding down the knot of panic rising through his chest. “What the fuck did he mean by that?!”  
  
“It doesn’t matter.” she husked. “There is nothing left in this blighted place for any of us.”  
  
“Don’t give me that! Of course it matters! Mashti!!”  
  
Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t respond. Iriel covered his face with his hands and screamed into them. Then he slumped back onto his stool. After a moment, he retrieved Mashti’s empty cup from the floor, and refilled it with bittergreen tea from the pot over the fire.  
  
Her eyes snapped open at the sound of the liquid. “You should not drink that,” she said, as he raised the cup to his lips.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because it’s poisoned,” she replied, as casually if she were warning him it might have gone cold.  
  
  
  
“Fuck!!!” Iriel emptied another basket of desiccated herbs onto the floor. “One of these must be roobrush, everyone has roobrush!” He picked up a scrap of plant matter and held it to the light. “Mashti? Wake the fuck up and tell me where the roobrush is. Or whatever else you have to cure poison. Mashti!!”  
  
“Sanit,” she slurred from her bed.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Sanit. The cave where his father died.” She coughed, weakly. “Half a day south of here, in the red foothills. That’s where you’ll find him.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Iriel, grimly overturning a barrel, “ for giving me that information exactly when I can no longer use it.”  
  
“Why? Leave me be. Go and find him, if he will be found.”  
  
“And let you summon a final curse upon him, the guilt of having killed you?” Iriel snatched up a sprig of roobrush, and began stripping the leaves into a bowl. “I think not.” He picked up the pestle, wrinkled his nose at the stains on it, and put it down again. He began crushing the roobrush with a knife-handle instead.  
  
“No,” he said after a while, “that’s not fair. I know you didn’t mean it as a curse, I… I’m sorry. I’m just… I need to go and find him, but… I know what he’d want me to do, so… I have to trust him a little longer.” He shot her a look. “We both do. It’s not too late for you to salvage something from this.”  
  
“How can you possibly know that?”  
  
“Because he isn’t like you. Whatever else you failed at, you achieved that much. Now tell me exactly what you poisoned this tea with, how much you drank, and when.” He scanned the yurt again. “And whether you have any fucking scathecraw.”  
  
“Not scathecraw,” came a sharp voice from the doorway. “Mixed with roobrush, that could weaken her further. We need alitsbane lichen, or better, scrib jelly.”   
  
The tall Urshilaku woman strode into the yurt, pushing her ash-scarf back from her white hair. Behind her, Ire heard a riding-guar whinny. “Talammu,” he faltered. “You came.”  
  
“Of course I came. I began preparing to travel the moment you told me where she was. But enough talk, the poison cure comes first.”  
  
“I… yes. Not scathecraw… of course. I’ll… go and… find…”  
  
“I’ll see to it,” she said. “She is my daughter, my responsibility. You need to go and fetch my grandson. If she really named him  _Julan_ , I think it’s high time I met him.”


	189. dead

_Blooooood._  The ghastly spectre writhed in the darkness, its mouth a void, the edges of its smoke-like form roiling and churning. Its voice was deep but echoless, bypassing mundane concepts like mouths and ears to arrive directly in Iriel’s head.  _Shared blood and spilled. Clan blood cries out for blood._  
  
“Yes.” Ire rubbed his brow; this was melodramatic and needlessly invasive. “You said. But I can’t spare any, so if you’ve quite finished moaning at me, I need to get past.” He moved towards the rock opening behind the ghost, but it whipped into his path, sending a shock of cold through his chest where it touched him.

“Stop that,” he said. “I’m not here to disturb the spirits or desecrate anything. I thought this was a cave, not a tomb.”  
  
_This not our ancestral holy ground, but we come here bound to a purpose. You shall not interfere._  
  
“I don’t want to! I’m just here looking for someone, and as soon as I find him, I’ll be on my–”  
  
_No. The one you seek is ours now._  
  
“He’s… dead?” Ire tried to seem impassive, this was no time to give them emotional leverage. “Show me his body, then. Or are you trying to get rid of me?”  
  
_His heart still beats, but he is ours now. You cannot have him._  
  
“I can, and I will. He’s outcast, and you’re dead. You have no claim over him.”  
  
_He will give himself willingly. He has no alternative. This is clan business, family business. Stay out of it, earth-walker._  
  
Iriel hadn’t crossed miles of stony scrubland in the rain, then spent hours blundering through a pitch-black cave complex for this. He drew a Daedric dagger from his belt. “I’d prefer this didn’t come to violence,” he said, “but I’m going down there.”  
  
_We are the honoured ancestors of the Ahemmusa_ , the ghost told him.  _You cannot harm us. You may banish our wraiths, but our eternal souls shall return again through the Waiting Door until our purpose is fulfilled._  
  
“Mm. About that.” Iriel angled the ebony blade, so the enchantment shimmered in the small magelight he was managing to maintain. “This dagger has a soul trap spell on it. Trapping sentient souls is terribly unethical, of course, but where I trained, you’d technically be classified as an undead revenant.” His mouth twisted. “It’s a grey area. So I’d prefer not to, but if–”  
  
He didn’t need to continue. The ghost had already vanished into the rock, wafting off to cause trouble elsewhere. Iriel exhaled, thankful that bluffing still worked on the dead. True, his blade was enchanted with soul trap, but he had no soul gems on him at all. He resheathed the dagger and began clambering down into the near-vertical tunnel the ghost had been guarding.  
  
He wished he had a clearer idea what was going on, here in this ugly crack in the earth between the Grazelands and the mountains. He’d found Julan’s boot-marks near the entrance, but no sign of anyone else. Inside, the first open space he’d reached had been burned black with ash and strewn with broken arrows. The scene of a battle, but years cold.  
  
A hole had been cleared, in the back, the fungus and cave-weeds hacked away to reveal a deeper passage. Soon, he’d found Julan’s boot-prints again, and, half an hour on, a freshly dead Scamp. Three wrong turns and a damp skid down a slimy crevasse later, he’d tripped over the first dead ash-beast, and begun to suspect Mashti had been right that these caves, too, led beneath Red Mountain.  
  
The corpses had kept him on the right track, after that, becoming more frequent, both Daedra and Dagoth-spawn. It was hotter, too, and from time to time, his magelight was supplemented by crystal outcrops, flowering from the walls in wan blues and nervous violets. No sound but the scrape of his feet, the rasp of his breath, and the slow, distant rumble of molten rock.  
  
Until he began to hear the voices of the dead. Voices or voice, it was hard to distinguish. It wasn’t one monologue, but a stream, a chaotic jumble of psychic flotsam and jetsam, shreds of memory and threads of thought, snarled one into another, dragged from the peace of the void and tossed through time, breaking still further, former identities fragmenting in the physical, smashed on the cruel certainties of Mundus. All that remained was the ghostline. Soul energy, bound together by age-old spells, and the blind cohesion of liquid, like clinging to like.  
  
Almost, but not entirely. There was one… not quite a voice, everything in his head had the same faceless, toneless quality, but… one strand that was consistent. That repeated, again and again, until Iriel saw the threads as a rope of meaning, knotting and holding the weaker souls in its narrative net, pulling them in a shared direction.  
  
_…heard her, the zainsubani girl, heard her weeping, heard her demand to speak to my husband in secret. i followed them. i learned the hard way not to leave sashael alone with pretty girls half his age and half again…_  
  
_…not what i feared, and yet worse. she told sashael he must tell HIM the truth, must take as son the one who was NOT his son, never his true son, who was outcast, was nothing… that he must do this because the mabrigash was weaving a plot that would kill the boy…_  
  
He’d begun seeing them, then, briefly, at the edges of the light. The wispy recollections of past lives. Always moving away, oblivious to him, lost in their soul-shocked navigation of this arduous and hostile world.  
  
_…held my breath in the shadows, ashamed of my hope, ashamed of my wish to remove this blight on my life and my marriage. since for all that i hated him, he was only a child. and had i not promised? had i not suffered him in the camp, so that my husband might look on him? not speak, never speak, but look?_  
  
Only when he’d come to this passage had the ancestors noticed him, tried to stop him. And even then the resistance had been distracted, half-hearted, gone before he could press for more information. Iriel chewed his cheek and crept forwards. The clamour of the dead was angry and insistent, their attention compressed into singleminded focus, like rapids rushing through a gorge.  
  
_…had i not agreed this? and sworn no harm upon the boy or even upon the witch? though all knew i could call down the bitter curses of lord boethiah any time i wished? and oh spirits, i did wish. but i did not, because i had promised. promised on the one condition that he never acknowledge him, never speak his name or hers. and i swore, and he swore, on blood and ash, soul and bone, the three blessings and the four corners, oaths deadly to break…_  
  
_…yet i heard him say now that he would break them. would risk raining destruction on all our clan, for this outcast not-son. i knew then i had to act, to protect my people, to protect my marriage, to protect my husband from his endless foolishness…_  
  
The rock beneath him was steep and slick, but there was light ahead now, crimson and spiteful.  
  
_…when he came to me, and begged me to release him from our compact, i pretended to understand. i told him i would undo the curse-bonds, and i did so…_  
  
_…but if he was released from his vows, so too was i…_  
  
Halfway down the incline, his feet went from under him, and he crashed, toppled, rolled helplessly through the opening and into the red cave. Through a dizzy blur, Ire took in a high, cragged ceiling, glowing lava far below… and a ledge beneath him, shrinking rapidly as he barrelled forwards. Flailing every limb, he clawed his way to a halt, spreadeagled on the edge of the precipice. Inside his head, the ghostline howled, drowning his thoughts.  
  
_…i prayed to lord boethiah as soon as he was gone. i prayed that sashael never speak a word to the boy. i prayed for cunning vengeance for the insults cast upon me. i prayed for blood. i prayed for that foul witch to feel all the agony i had suffered, and more…_  
  
_…i was angry. i spoke rashly, imprecisely. the daedra offer us great power, but they take delight in such things, and grant prayers to suit their own amusements. i received the trap that took my husband from me, nothing of him spared, even for the bone-rites…_  
  
_…all her fault… forcing my hand… i paid the price she should have paid, but she shall pay it yet! when i sent my soul to the ancestors, i charged it with spells that would bind them to my vengeance! we called to him, in his dreams, but he would not listen. now he knows her treachery, he will finally be our sword!_  
  
Through the furious anguish of the dead, Iriel heard Julan scream, somewhere above him. He looked up. There was a narrow spit of rock, high and far across the cavern, lit by the lava below. Julan was half-way along it, legs braced for balance, hands shielding his head. The air around him… the entire ceiling of the cavern… was full of ghosts.  
  
They surrounded Julan like light-maddened insects, diving and swarming, blocking his way back to the tunnel he’d entered from. One swooped straight through his shoulder, and he flinched, staggered, screamed again. Ire called his name, to no avail.  
  
“Get out… of my head!” Julan’s voice was uneven, exhausted. Louder, closer, were the dead souls, curse-fused by power and malice into a whip, their demands piercing Iriel’s head like skewers, and he wasn’t even their target.  
  
_You would still be her shield, after such a betrayal?_  
  
“No,” he heard Julan rasp, “but how can I–” __  
  
_You would turn from justice? This one act would prove you his true son, let you claim your place. You would spit on his bones instead, and pledge yourself to the witch?_  
  
“No!”  
  
_Then take back his blood from her! This is your initiation test, outcast! This will make you Ahemmusa, from breath to ash. Clan must cleave to clan, dead to living, life to death. Will you turn away from your people when they need you, when they cry out for your aid?_  
  
“No!!”  
  
_Then answer betrayal with betrayal! Eat your mother’s sin, purge her poison from your blood and strike her down! Swear it, bind yourself to us!_  
  
A silence that cracked and bled, then: “No… I need to  _think_ , I can’t just… I came here to find the truth, not…”  
  
_So you choose her._  
  
“No…”  
  
_Then you choose nothing! Outside the clan, there is nothing! Choose nothing, and you will be nothing, have nothing, mean nothing!_  
  
“…that’s… not…”  
  
_Lies and delusions! You are still her creature, then. Break free! Choose!!_  
  
“NO!!!”  
  
The ghosts dived at him, a swarming mass of mindless rage.  
  
Then Ire saw him fall.  
  
Saw every thread in him snap clean.  
  
And Iriel launched himself into space. No rope, no cape, no spells, no thought, no hope, really, of saving anyone from anything, only of sharing in it. Of being with him, when the impact came.


	190. weight

First was the mid-air collision, Iriel’s momentum knocking them from over the lava to over the rock, dozens of feet below.  
  
Then falling, yet again. Why always this, the helplessness of it, the hopelessness? The inevitability, the understanding, in that deceptively weightless final moment, that your entire existence, every passion, every dream, every achievement and aspiration, could be reduced to a simple mass-based calculation, under the laws of physics. That whatever your bloodline, beauty, intellect, or magical will, ultimately, your life consisted, in this timeless and elegant conversion of force, of just enough meat to snuff itself out.

Once, Ire had found this sort of thing comforting. It was one of the many reasons he’d suspected he wasn’t cut out to be a mage.  
  
Now, he was sure of it.  
  
Falling, still falling, twisting and tangled together.  
  
It felt never-ending, and yet, there was no time. Barely even time for recognition to flicker in Julan’s eyes, seeing Iriel’s face beneath him, and the rocks rushing in behind.  
  
There was no time. All was thoughtless instinct, impossible to parse. The rush of air, the unreality of freefall, Julan’s arms gripping his, wrenching, weight shifting–  
  
–he didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late–  
  
“No! Not this time, you bastard, don’t you d–”  
  
Physics completed its conversion with a sickening crunch.


	191. heal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: injury description, broken bones, blood.

His neck was broken. Or his back, Iriel wasn’t sure. He knew only that something in Julan’s spine had twisted and crumpled, when they hit the rock, and now the angles of his head and shoulders were all wrong. He was more certain about the ribs. He had felt those go beneath him, on impact. At least three, Ire thought. One on the left side of his chest had pierced the lung, judging by Julan’s raw, laboured breathing, and the bloody foam collecting on his lips. A collarbone, too, most likely. Skull fracture, perhaps. There might have been leg injuries, but Iriel’s examination hadn’t got that far. The light was poor, and by then, he couldn’t see much for tears.  
  
The details made no difference. Julan’s injuries were clearly fatal, they were hundreds of feet deeper than help or Intervention, and there was nothing at all he could do.  
  
He’d tried every spell he could think of, and watched each one fail.  
  
A murder of ghosts churned in vortex above them, seething with impotent fury. Every so often, one would arc out to skim closer, and Iriel would glare at it until it returned to the cloud.  
  
“Idiot,” he told Julan. “Fucking… _idiot_. You’re the healer! Why couldn’t you… just…” Wiping his eyes, Ire smeared more blood across his cheek. None of it was his.  
  
He wasn’t sure if Julan could hear anything. His eyes were closed, but sometimes a muscle in his face would contract, or a limb spasm, briefly. His gasps of air, fast and erratic at first, had begun, almost imperceptibly, to slow.  
  
Iriel knelt in the dim, red light, wondering how long it would be until they stopped.  
  
  
Julan’s eyes flickered open, blank with pain. He drew a sharp breath that became a moan, quickly crushed into a whimper, followed by shallow, whistling mouthfuls of air through gritted teeth.  
  
Ire bent over him, catching his twitching hand and cradling it. “Shhh, love, lie still. I know it hurts, I’m so sorry. You… you don’t have to be brave about it. Your ma’s not here, no one’s here but me.”   
  
Julan’s hand clenched fitfully around his, and Ire squeezed it until Julan’s breathing was softer, and his grip fell slack.  
  
“Why do parents always say that?” Ire demanded of no one, when the quiet became more than he could stand. “Tell you not to cry, try to convince you being brave means pretending things don’t hurt. They don’t do it to ease your suffering, they do it to ease theirs. They can’t bear to see your pain, so they make you hide it.” He sighed. “I can’t ease your pain, love, but I promise, I can bear seeing it.”  
  
For some time, Iriel remained bent over their clasped hands, trying not to jolt Julan whenever a breath shook into a sob. Then he raised his head. “No,” he hissed. “Fuck just bearing witness.”  
  
Slipping his hands free, he forced himself to trace the lines of Julan’s body again. Tried to sense the mangled bones, tried to extend his consciousness past his own frantic respiration and circulation, and open himself to another’s. He almost… something… but at the first trickle of awareness, panic overtook him, and he sat back with a ragged gasp.  
  
“Healing is fucking terrifying, you know? No… you don’t know, do you? You were never afraid of trying to change things. Of taking responsibility for something, making it your problem, and facing the consequences if you’re wrong. Me, I… never had hands safe enough for that. Not for myself, so how for anyone else? Healing can be so painful, more painful than the original injury, sometimes, breaking and resetting, and what if you’re making things worse? When should you give up, when are you no longer doing it for their benefit? When to let broken things rest?  
  
"And… gods, I’m so bad with pain. My own was bad enough, but other people’s? I numbed myself to it for so long that when I stopped, it was paralysing. Because what can you ever do about it? Changing a perception is one thing. Changing a physical law is another. But people? You can’t change people, I thought, not permanently. They’re too complex for those easy answers, for heroic rescues and happy endings.”  
  
He sighed, shook out his hands, and laid them just below the hollow at the base of Julan’s throat. He had the briefest impression of a crystalline stillness. Of frozen energy, held just beneath the surface. Like an enchantment, if he could only find the pattern of it, the key. But when he tried to focus on it, his attention was drawn to Julan’s face instead, warped and made foreign by pain, but still his face, distracting Ire’s fingers into tenderness, touching and stroking.  
  
“I love you so fucking much. I think… hope… you know that already, but I’m sorry I was so terrible at saying it. Giving someone my love never felt like any kind of favour. Not a gift, but a fireball. A pit I was dragging them into. I was… ashamed.” He brushed the hair from Julan’s forehead, caressed him from cheek to ear to jaw.  
  
“It seemed so cruel and ridiculous to say you couldn’t love someone until you loved yourself. I mean… I felt things, of course I did! And it was so tempting to believe that wringing some kind of… longing for contact, some quantity of desire and affection out of my wreck of a heart meant that I was successfully loving someone. And… I’m not saying I didn’t love you, but… I was so terribly _bad_ at loving you, while I believed I had nothing to offer you. While I couldn’t believe myself worthy of love, while I was so full of shame and self-hatred that instead of giving you my love, I gave you that, instead.  
  
"I still have imperial fucktons of shame. It’s not going anywhere, but I know where it lives, now. I’m better at telling when I’m close to the edge, better at dodging, when things try and drag me in. I have ways to defend myself, weapons you gave me.”  
  
A sudden breath, that hid the shadow of a laugh. “So… even if my love is accidentally shaped like a spear, it’s still yours. Yours to hold and use, if I can keep myself from giving it to you point-first. I think… it’s worth something. It’s stronger than I thought.”  
  
It blossomed in his chest. Warm as hearthfire, light as thistledown, flowing down his arm and into the hand he’d left resting on Julan’s neck. A blue glimmer melted into grey skin, and suddenly Julan’s chest spasmed, sucking in air, agonised pulse thudding frantically against Ire’s fingers. His own heart seizing, Iriel snatched back his hand, all else lost in a useless wave of nausea and fear. He rocked back and forth on his heels, wringing his hands and muttering curses.  
  
“Not just ashamed.” His voice came thin and brittle, now, words decaying as they met the air. “I was scared. So fucking scared. Because… I mean… it’s like healing, isn’t it? Once I realised how alone and vulnerable you were, the thought of taking responsibility for you was terrifying. I was… angry, even. How dare you be so weak, so guilt-inducing, who gave you permission to be such a fucking mess? That’s my job!” He forced a mirthless grin, but couldn’t sustain it, and his head dropped.  
  
"I thought I knew what I was doing, at first. I thought you were trapped, and I just needed to free you, but I was cutting so blindly I only gave you more wounds. Next, I tried weaving safety nets, rescues you didn’t ask for. Tying you to things, people, places, guilds, tribes… anyone but me. Because anyone could hold you safer than I could. For some strange, unfathomable reason… you still kept wanting me. I started telling myself I was bad for you, holding you back, that it would be selfish to pretend otherwise. I was afraid. Of trying to do something I’d only fail at.” His shoulders hunched, then fell limp. “I’m still so scared, but… I’m not nearly as scared of failing as I’m scared I won’t get to try any more.”  
  
He closed his eyes, heartrate evening out, hands knotted against his breast. He’d long since taken off the Moon-and-Star, but as his fingers rubbed against each other, his right hand found the place on his left, where the metal had lacerated his palm. He opened his hand and pressed his thumb against the wound, watching the broken line of Julan’s chest flutter and dip.  
  
“I mean… we’re all weak, aren’t we? All vulnerable. Everything in this realm is so fragile and ephemeral. Of course it’s terrifying, it should be. And we’re just stupid, short-lived mortals, so of course every single one of us is going to be a fuck up, to some degree or other. Not even in nice neat ways, that we can fix by clinging to someone else, matching perfectly aligned jagged halves into something faultless and whole. It’s messy, and it always will be. There’s no place in this world for perfection. Not in either of us, and not in our love. And yet, between love and perfection, I know which I’d rather have.  
  
"You are fragile and imperfect, and I love you. I am fragile and imperfect, and I can let you love me. I can let you see me as I am, however messy that might be, and… I hope that instead of thinking less of you, for loving me anyway, I can think better of myself. I’m sure I’ll still fail at it, sometimes, but… it’s all right, because just as I can bear your pain, I know you’re strong enough to bear mine.”  
  
His hand ached; he was gripping it too hard. He stared at it. _You’ve been getting it wrong this whole time. Overcomplicating everything, as usual. Kindness isn’t about whether you deserve it. It’s just… kindness, the alleviation of pain._  
  
It was such a simple thing, to let his own energy circulate. Not forcing it, but releasing it, opening a secret door he’d always thought a solid wall. Letting it flow from right hand to left, speeding the knitting of the flesh until he could barely tell he’d been hurt at all.  
  
He thought Julan had fallen unconscious again, but when Iriel turned back to him, his eyelids had parted a red fraction, and his lips were struggling to shape words.  
  
“I… fell…”  
  
Ire leaned forwards, taking his hand again, pressing it between his. “We both did, love. Try not to move.”  
  
“No, I… _fell_. Failed. False.”  
  
“You didn’t fail!” Iriel’s eyes were bright, his tears reflecting sharp points of light from the corners. Limpid, perhaps. Crystalline, even. The rest of his face held less potential for lyrical description, but real pain rarely does. “If you fell, it’s only because you were pushed. And not false. Never false.”  
  
“Many fall, but…”  
  
“No–”  
  
“…one remains. That’s… you.”  
  
“The FUCK it is!” Ire glared into the slivers of Julan’s eyes, daring him to close them again. “YOU remain! Yes, you fell, but you can still get up again. You’re still here, still something. No, you’re not who you thought, but who the fuck is? You think I care about that? I don’t want Nerevar! I want you, failed and false, fallen and fucked up, same as me.” Jaw set, Ire huffed air through the gap in his teeth. “You’re not going anywhere.”  
  
Leaving the other clasping Julan’s, Iriel inched his right hand towards Julan’s collar and moved the cloth aside. “There, now, it’s all right. It’s going to be fine,” he muttered, chanting it like a prophecy.  
  
As he touched the skin, Julan flinched, and Ire tightened his grip on his hand. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you are. Stop comparing yourself to legendary heroes, that was always going to crush you. Not because you failed, because they’re not real, and you are. You are allowed to be hurt, and you are allowed to be weak. You are allowed to be angry, and scared, and sad. You are allowed to make mistakes, even if they hurt me. You… you are allowed to have your own needs and desires! I know you’ve always had to break and twist yourself to be who you think everyone else needs you to be, but just be you. Please. Just you.”  
  
He curled his hand behind Julan’s neck. Found the crooked place, at the back, where the vertebrae jutted oddly, sharp beneath the skin. Ire took a long breath. “I’m not afraid of any part of you.”  
  
Now that he looked, it was obvious. There were the bones, their symmetry misaligned, but legible. There was the spinal cord, wrenched out of place. but intact. The body knew how it wanted to be, he only had to listen, and follow instructions. Provide support, do the heavy lifting.  
  
“Keep very still, love. This will probably hurt, but it’s going to be all right.”  
  
Perhaps it was Alteration he used to move the bones, Mysticism to maintain his awareness, Illusion to mitigate the pain. Perhaps it was all Restoration. It was magic, he didn’t try to label it any more. It was energy, creativity, love.  
  
The ribs were even easier. He had laid his hands here a thousand times, knew how the landscape of Julan’s chest should feel. He drew the shattered pieces carefully towards him, easing the shard out of the lung, uniting and moulding them into place.  
  
When he’d done all he could, he was drained and lightheaded, but the taut agony had begun to drain from Julan’s face, his posture looser, his breathing soft and smooth.  
  
“I think,” Ire whispered, “my mistake was in believing I had to take that kind of responsibility for anyone in the first place. That I was committing to providing a perfect and complete future for them, together with all the guilt and blame if it failed to come to pass. Of course I recoiled from that, it’s impossible. You can’t ever promise that to somebody. But… you don’t have to. You only have to support them in the moment, commit to that moment. Give them the strength to do the rest on their own. If that’s rescuing people, then… I can believe in that.”  
  
He lay down beside Julan, wincing as he straightened his cramped knees, but settling into an almost-comfortable position, nestled against the slow rise and fall of Julan’s chest, the flicker of his pulse, all the familiar rhythms of his body.  
  
“Perhaps it’s being so fragile that makes people so incredibly resilient. I don’t know if you can change them, but I do know they can change. They’ll always keep growing and healing, if the cells have the simple things they need in order to multiply. But… providing that means embracing the chaos and uncertainty of it. The knowledge that people might change in unexpected ways, grow differently… or apart. The possibilities are endless, and terrifying. But… life is possibilities.” He gasped out a laugh. “Terrifying possibilities. So… while there is life, I will do what I can to preserve those possibilities intact.”  
  
He buried his nose in Julan’s neck, closed his eyes against the heat of his skin. “I know you’re still falling, wherever you are, but I will wait here as long as it takes. Holding out my tattered blanket to catch you, praying it’s enough.”  
  
  
Later, when he twitched from his uneasy doze, the dead were still swirling angrily overhead. Iriel couldn’t be bothered to care. In the half-light, he saw that Julan’s eyes were open, that he was trying, weakly, to smile. Ire kissed him with as much restraint as he could manage, balanced on a tender knife-edge between caution and relief.  
  
  
“I’m afraid,” Iriel said, when he could avoid such things no longer, “that I have no idea how we can get out of here. I can’t see any exits from this part of the cavern that don’t require far more levitation than I could safely risk. The last thing I want to do is let you fall again.”  
  
“I can’t leave yet.” Julan’s voice was weak, but insistent. “I have to… find where my father died. We’re almost beneath the Ghostfence, but his body must be past it. That’s why… they could never call his soul back with the rites, it was trapped. If I could just get a little further, I could… find out what really happened, and–”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous! You shouldn’t move at all, until your bones are properly set. Anyway, does any of that matter, now?”  
  
Julan flicked a finger upwards. “It does to them. I need to know if Moth… if she really did it. They won’t leave me be until I kill her, but…”  
  
“They don’t care!” Iriel was gently incredulous. “Didn’t you hear them? They know she didn’t kill him, but they don’t care! They want someone to blame, blood to sate… whatever they think it will fucking sate, because it won’t make anything better!”  
  
“Then what can I do? He was my father, but I never knew him, she never told me! I knew the rumours, but there were rumours my father was every man in the tribe! He… used to watch me, in the camp. I thought he was making sure I didn’t steal anything! That voice I heard, on Red Mountain, that I assumed was Dagoth Ur. I think maybe… it was him. Trying to stop me… getting myself killed.” Tears slid from his eyes as Iriel desperately tried to calm him, fearful a sob might shake his ribs apart again. “I wasted my whole life, Iya. It was all a lie.”  
  
“You didn’t waste it! And only some things were lies, not everything. Sweetheart, I know you’ll make the right choice, and I’ll support you in whatever it is. But right now, you need to lie still. You need to heal.”  
  
Julan closed his eyes, resigned. Suppressed a cough. “I’m so thirsty,” he muttered.  
  
Ire grimaced. “I don’t have any water, I’m afraid. I barely brought anything, like a fool. Let me go and look around, perhaps I can–”  
  
“No, stay here. If I have to lie here without moving, you need to talk to me, or I’ll go mad.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ire said, after a moment. “I don’t know what I should say. All I keep thinking is that we might still die in here. That even if we get back up to the tunnels, I can’t remember the way out. So unless you want to hear about that–”  
  
“Uh… no. Sing to me?”  
  
Ire exhaled shakily, laughter verging on tears. “I can’t. They’re all too sad, my songs. I’ve had enough of that, today.”  
  
“Thought you said you found them comforting.”  
  
“Not now, not… not like this.”  
  
Julan didn’t move, except to grin. “Then at least… I get to be right about something, for once… can die happy now…”  
  
“Don’t you dare, you trashbag.”  
  
Julan yawned. “…‘k. But only 'cause I love you.”  
  
“I love you, too, now shhh. Try to rest, and I’ll look for water.”  
  
As Iriel stood, there was a commotion from the ghosts above him, a great hissing and turbulence. “Leave us alone, you unwashed dishrags,” he snapped. “Don’t you have other descendants to bother?”  
  
But the dead weren’t facing his way. They were clustering around something high in the darkness that he couldn’t see. Iriel was about to ignore them, when he heard a distant voice.  
  
“Urshi assarnibibi, za'erureth ye'el dran?”  
  
Ire squinted upwards. “Hello?” he called, then, abandoning reserve: “HEY! IS SOMEONE THERE? WE NEED HELP!”  
  
“Zanna? Obi… ob'areth?”  
  
He could see the Velothi woman now, levitating down through the ghosts as they parted meekly around her. At first, all he could tell was that she was wearing a voluminous brown robe, because when she saw Iriel, she bent awkwardly, and gathered the hem in one hand, to stop it ballooning indecorously around her waist as she descended.  
  
Closer now, he saw her beltful of pouches and her charm-strung neck. Her red, tasselled shoulderbag, and her black hair, bluntly cropped into a style even shorter and less flattering than his own.  
  
Finally, as she landed, he saw her face. Barely older than he was, but marked with rows of dots along her chin and beneath her eyes. Eyes that quickly took him in, scanning for detail, carrying both assurance of judgement, and a darting tension. Her knuckles were white against her bag-strap. She was afraid, he realised, afraid but determined to be brave.  
  
A furrow appeared in her brow. “I know you.” Her eyes went wide. “You are Shani’s Altmer!” She stared at him, apparently able to do nothing useful with this realisation. Then she looked past him. “Is that… Julan?!”  
  
He offered her an awkward wave, from the ground. “Hi, Min.”  
  
  
Unwilling to remain Shani’s property, in her worldview, Iriel tried, in a vague sort of way, to introduce himself. She, kneeling on the ground and rummaging in her scrib-silk bag, was more confident in her identity. “I am Minabibi Assardarainat,” she said, “assintashiran, alchemist and apprentice to Sinnammu Mirpal, wise woman of the Ahemmusa.”  
  
Ire was trying to help Julan drink one of her healing potions without either spilling it, or moving his neck. It was a losing battle, but some of it was going down his throat. “What was that thing you said? Before alchemist.”  
  
“I don’t know the eramuri… the Aldmeris word,” she said, scowling. “It means I serve the dead. I give offerings to them. I bring messages to them, and receive their answer. I am trained to sense their presence and their needs. That is why I could track them to this place.”  
  
“Alone?”  
  
Her scowl deepened. “It was my responsibility to care for them. I do not know how it happened, but when I opened the kausagursha today, I could call nothing through it. They were gone. They should not have been able to do this! My bone charms were good, and yet…”  
  
With tense movements, she pulled a small, wooden box from her bag, inlaid with ebony and shimmering purple-blue bugshell. She placed it on the ground before her. “I must draw them back, and return before Sintushpi Sinnammu finds out. Already, she talks of replacing me as her apprentice. I cannot give her more reasons to doubt.”  
  
“Can you do that? Get rid of them? They’re here for Julan, and they don’t want to leave.”  
  
“I know. I hear them. But that is a matter for Sintushpi Sinnammu, not for me. My duty is to the dead, and they should not be here like this. It is dangerous for them to remain in Mundus too long. They are angry and wild, but I will try to calm them.”  
  
She opened the box. From inside, she took a small pinch of ash, and tossed it into the air. Before it could fall, she began to hum a single note, high and keening. The ash hung above her, suspended. Then, as she shifted the note still higher, it began to rise, moving in a lazy spiral towards the mass of ancestors.  
  
He couldn’t see the ash any more, but Iriel could see the spirits reaction to it. They came pouring downwards, a slow-twisting tornado of souls, moaning in their low, colourless drone.  
  
When the first ones grew close, Minabibi took a hasty gulp of air and opened her mouth. Eyes screwed shut, she produced another sound, throbbing and resonating from the depths of her throat, vibrating with an ineffable sadness. One by one, the dead modulated their tone to hers in eerie chorus, until the whole cavern echoed with their shared song.  
  
To Iriel, it felt like the music of separation and loss, of mourning and lamentation. Sadder than any of his mother’s folk tunes, because it had no end and no beginning, no words to define and limit it. It seemed to broaden and swell into the sound of all sorrow.  
  
Until Minabibi changed her tune again, introducing a new note. The dead were clouded around her, now, yearning and writhing. The note she extended to them was a candle in the darkness, a caress, a whispered consolation. Iriel was overcome by the conviction that the hands of everyone he’d ever loved and lost were inches away, longing for him, all differences forgotten, if he would only draw closer, shed his pride and reach out, touch–  
  
Minabibi closed the box with a snap. The air was silent and empty, and the dead had disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minabibi’s ghost-herding owes much to Sunderlorn’s headcanons about Ashlander ancestor magic and ritual.
> 
> ~*~please read [Ghostline](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8322961/chapters/19061416) for more soft necromancy~*~


	192. living

Iriel sat, hunched crosslegged in the dry dust outside Mamaea the healer’s yurt. Their arrival had caused some commotion, but most of the tribe were out in the Grazelands at this time of the afternoon. The real trouble was probably still to come.  
  
Yenammu wandered past him, whistling a tune over a basket of marshmerrow. He glanced at Iriel and raised his eyebrows. Then he shrugged and carried on, never a man to take on a problem he could leave for somebody else.

Ire had been uneasy about Minabibi’s insistence they bring Julan to Ahemmusa Camp. “It’s true that his mother’s place isn’t a good option right now,” he’d said, “but your people won’t even let him in, will they?”  
  
She’d frowned, eyes darting to the scrib-silk bag slung from her shoulder. “They must. I will speak with Sintushpi Sinnammu.”  
  
Minabibi’s supply of levitation potions had only lasted as far as the cave entrance, but they’d managed between them somehow, Julan’s legs fortunately the least damaged part of his body. Still, he couldn’t stay upright without help, and Iriel had been constantly terrified he was going to reopen his fractures.  
  
Minabibi had been more sanguine, only rolling her eyes when Julan rasped, with a crooked smirk, “Like old times, eh, Min?”  
  
“He means,” she’d sighed, when Iriel expressed confusion, “the many times I was forced to help Shani carry him to his yurt from the Tradehouse, too drunk to walk.”  
  
Julan had been silent for the remainder of the journey. From exhaustion and pain, Ire had assumed, at the time.  
  
A scrib scuttled into view. It wore a tiny hat, made from a folded hackle-lo leaf, and trailed a length of string from its neck. It was followed by a small girl (one of Mamaea’s, he thought) in a blue dress, scrabbling for the end of the leash. She succeeded in catching hold of it, and tugged the scrib back in the opposite direction, chattering reprimands at it while it hissed and thumped its tail.  
  
Now, Minabibi was in the wise woman’s yurt with her mentor, and had been for some time. Mamaea had taken charge of Julan, albeit with vocal misgivings.  
  
“I’m a healer, ” she’d said. “That means my job’s not to judge, it’s to heal whoever I have before me, and he’s before me. But if Sinnammu comes and tells me he’s to be thrown out on his rear, then he’s out. No arguments.”  
  
Ire would have stayed, but Mamaea had dismissed him in her most ironclad of tones. For a while he’d tried to help out around the camp, but without much success, only feeling he was getting in the way. It was easier just to wait.  
  
An ancient woman with clouded pink eyes and streaming grey hair shuffled slowly towards him, her half-toothed mouth fallen slack. “Tuda'eth… netash samsi?” she croaked. Iriel blinked, wondering if he’d mistranslated, or if she really had asked him if he was a yellow netch. He shook his head. She accepted his denial with a soft sigh, then turned and ambled away.  
  
When Minabibi finally emerged from Sinnammu’s yurt, she was tensely pale, holding herself stiffly upright. Earlier, Iriel had made the mistake of asking about her hair, commenting that most Ashlanders seemed to grow it long. Her face, always (inadvertently?) sullen, had frozen, then hardened into a mortified glare. “It is a punishment,” she’d grated. “My braids were cut, to show that I must regrow all my wisdom from the beginning.”  
  
“But why?” he’d asked, too surprised to stop himself. Her obsidian silence was the only reply he’d received, but by then he’d remembered something Shani had said. “You freed a slave!” he’d exclaimed. “The hunters captured an escaped slave, but you set them free, and got in trouble for it!”  
  
Her expression hadn’t changed. Unsure if she was interpreting his delight as support or mockery, he’d asked, more quietly: “Do you… regret it? Are you really growing all your wisdom again from the beginning?”  
  
At this, she’d smiled a small, secret smile, and shaken her head so slightly he almost didn’t catch it. Out loud, she’d said: “I have learned my lesson. In the future, I will truly be wise. I will behave with honour and discretion, and work to increase the greatness of the Ahemmusa.”  
  
Understanding, he’d grinned back and wished her luck, impressed by her ability to reject the siren song of open rebellion, in pursuit of longer-term victories.  
  
Now, she joined Iriel on the ground, tucking her long skirts around her legs. “Better than I expected,” she replied to his unspoken enquiry. “Sintushpi says it was not my fault that the ghosts escaped the  _kausagursha_. She says Ahmabi’s soul-curse would overcome any bone charm I could make. She praised me for bringing them home unaided.”  
  
“I’m glad. What about… the curse itself?”  
  
“She is still considering. Probably, she will want to consult with the gulakhans.”  
  
Celegorn ran through the camp, making a noise like a steam-powered knitting machine. His body was covered with dozens of translucent, three-inch shalk-grubs, clinging to his skin with their tiny hooked legs and natural adhesive properties. Beyond that, he was naked. “ALL HAIL THE BEETLE QUEEN!!!” he screamed, as he vanished between the yurts. He didn’t see Iriel at all.  
  
Ire glanced at Minabibi. “How is he, um… working out for you?”  
  
She shrugged. “As you see, he has a natural talent with our animals. And he hunts well. I am told there is more problem making him stop hunting than start, so already he is more use than Shani.” Ire snorted, but she wasn’t laughing. “I cannot say if they will ever be accepted as initiated clan, but the Ahemmusa are not in a position to turn down willing help. It would be worth having the Bosmer to keep the Orsimer alone. Bodu shoots better from guarback than some do on foot, and he can mend anything we bring him.”  
  
The yurt behind them flapped open, and Mamaea’s head emerged, scanning for life. “Still here?” she said. “Good.”  
  
Ire straightened up from his slouch. “How is he?”  
  
“Not bad. Give him another day on his back, to be safe, but he should progress quickly, after. You healed him yourself, you said?” She sounded incredulous. “You might have done a lot worse. Necks are risky business.”  
  
“Can I see him?”  
  
Mamaea pursed her lips. “Maybe. But it’s Sinnammu he’s asking for. Minabibi, will you go?”  
  
Minabibi hesitated. “Sintushpi Sinnammu is deep in thought,” she said.  
  
“Then ask her nicely, girl. If the outcast can show proper respect, I’m sure you can manage.”  
  
Only Ire saw Minabibi’s expression as she walked away, but he tried to enjoy it enough for everyone.    
  
  
  
The healer’s yurt was peaceful, sunbeams falling through the skylight and filtering warmly through the skins and patterned hangings. Iriel crouched behind the sharp-smelling herb baskets, as unobtrusive as he could make himself, short of magic. When the wise woman had finished making her sedately musical, jingling, tinkling way in, attended by Minabibi and her limping, sour-faced gulakhan, Dutadalk, Ire had slipped inside too, but he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be there. That said, the occasional muffled footstep or suppressed cough from outside the yurt’s thin walls told him he was far from the only eavesdropper.  
  
Mamaea shoved a stool across the floor, and Sinnammu Mirpal sat down carefully.  
  
Julan was on a bedroll, though not on his back, a fact which caused Mamaea to narrow her eyes, when she noticed. Despite this, she said nothing. Nor did anyone else, evidently waiting for Sinnammu to speak first. The Ahemmusa may not have been as overtly formal with their elders as the Urshilaku, but their every movement and glance told Iriel they held this small, white-haired old woman in the highest admiration and respect.  
  
For a long time, she said nothing, only watched Julan. He knelt across from her, hands gripping his knees. His clothes were still torn and dirty from the cave, but he’d washed his face and combed his hair back as best he could. His head was deferentially bowed, though his eyes kept flicking up to monitor her reaction through his brows.  
  
“I am told you have something to say to me,” she said, finally. Her voice astonished Iriel. It was both young and old, husky and clear, filled with wind and waves and water. Oddly intimate, as if she were speaking to him alone, each word a secret. “Say it, then.”  
  
He saw Julan’s shoulders rise and fall, then his chin lift. “Sintushpi Sinnammu Mirpal,” he began, voice hoarse with tension. “Nadinam hael cha-ilunibibi cha-misinn… uh… misibadon. Sa'oith dunabibi assashi dar-Ahemmusa. Dar-mash– um…dar…  dar-mael, dar shishi, dar-kausa, dar-mash. I… uh… Ha'aroith… pal…”  
  
He hesitated, throat bobbing as he swallowed, and Sinnammu Mirpal intervened. “Shall we assume,” she suggested gently, “that you have paid all the correct respects, and move on to your true meaning? In this language, perhaps, for the sake of other guests present?”  
  
Julan nodded gratefully. Shifted his hand slightly, to better cover a grass stain on his pants. “I wish,” he said, “to apologise on behalf of my mother, Mashti Kaushibael, for her crimes against the Ahemmusa, and to beg your permission to make atonement in her name.”  
  
“Indeed?” Sinnammu sounded faintly bemused by this. “And what crimes would these be?”  
  
“I don’t know if she killed Han-Sashael, my… father.” He was trying not to let his voice shake, but it was a losing battle. “I don’t  _think_  she did, but… I can’t be sure. But… even if she’s innocent of his blood, her other crimes are many. She gave great insult to the Ahemmusa, to the clanbound wife of the ashkhan. The ancestors are justly angry, and demand retribution. They demand that I take her life, in payment for the honour she stole from the Ahemmusa.”  
  
“So I understand.”  
  
He nodded mechanically. “I… yes. Of course. I want to… thank you for your generous offer. I’m sorry… that I can’t accept.”  
  
“My offer?”  
  
“Whatever her crimes, she’s still… I can’t trade in a life like that, even for the privilege of becoming Ahemmusa. I’m sorry. So… I ask you… how else can I make this right? What can I do to atone for her sins, so the Ahemmusa’s blood-curse can be lifted?”  
  
“What can  _you_  do to atone for  _her_  sins?” Sinnammu repeated.  
  
“I give the decision to you.” His voice was steadier, now. “I was born from her sins, so it’s only right I should repay them. I put myself in your hands, Sintushpi. I will accept any punishment you think right, but… with your permission, I’d like to do one thing first. To search the deep caverns of Sanit, and bring back my father’s heart-bone from beneath Red Mountain. I will return it to the tribe, so that his spirit can join the ancestors, as he should have done, many years ago. Once this is done, I submit myself completely to your judgement.”  
  
Sinnammu Mirpal was silent for a long time. Behind her, Iriel, despairing of ever catching Julan’s eye, stopped mouthing “NO” and “WHAT THE FUCK,” and sank his head into his hands.  
  
At last, Sinnammu said: “And what of your father’s sins? Against the Urshilaku, against his wife, and against your mother? Will you bear those, too?”  
  
Julan set his jaw. “I’ll try.”  
  
“How noble.” Sinnammu seemed tired. She shifted on her stool, easing her clicking hips into a more comfortable position. “Then who will bear your sins, Julan Kaushibael? I am sure you can have no room left for them. Who will it be? Will it be Shani again, who must bear them, or someone else? The drinking and the fighting, the shouting and sulking, the impossible standards, the wild claims and the blind rages when anyone questioned them? Who will atone for the trouble and pain you have caused, while you are so very busy atoning for other people? Is it easier, do you think, to repair your parents’ mistakes, than your own?”  
  
More silence, as Julan’s shoulders slumped lower. “Maybe,” he sighed. “I don’t know. I want to fix that too, but I don’t know where to begin.” He pushed his fingers into his hairline, ruining his earlier efforts. “I thought I knew how, but I was wrong. I thought I could help you, but… I just wanted to gain your approval without having to face you, or to ask for forgiveness.”  
  
He looked up, met her eye. “I’m asking you now. What should I do? How can I make all this right, without killing her? Give me any other test to pass, and I’ll try to prove worthy of it, but not this.”  
  
“Tests, tests, tests,” she muttered. “I have never understood the fixation that some have with tests. What does it prove, that a person can do a thing under condition of testing? The real proof is in the living of it, day by day. But perhaps that is not the purpose of tests.”  
  
She leaned forwards, scrutinising him. “Understand, Julan Kaushibael, that there was never any offer from me, nor any living Ahemmusa, to give you clan-rites, if you spilled Mashti’s blood. Nor will there ever be any such offer. It was the death-curse of a vengeful soul. It would have promised anything to drive your act, but given you nothing.”  
  
“It wasn’t about that!” Julan’s voice almost broke into a shout, but didn’t. “I’m not asking for anything, I only…” He exhaled sharply, glaring barely restrained frustration at her. “Everything’s a blighted mess! Sometimes it feels like everyone in the world is trying to make themselves as miserable as possible, doing all these stupid, destructive things out of hatred, or anger, or jealousy, or whatever! And I should know, I’ve done it too! I just want to work out what I can  _do_ about it!”  
  
“It is certainly a tangle,” Sinnammu Mirpal remarked dryly. “But much of it is decades old, and not of your making. Do not be such a fool as to think you will find one magical act that will untie it all. That was your father’s way. Though, again… this is not to say that such acts have no value.”  
  
She tilted her head, first one way and then the other, shell beads clinking.  
  
“Very well. You may have your test, Julan Kaushibael. I charge you, return to thrice-cursed Sanit, and bring home Han-Sashael’s heart-bone from the Daedra caves. It will bring great hope to the Ahemmusa, to have his strength and courage with us once more.”  
  
Julan was immobile, barely finding the breath to ask: “And then?”  
  
“Nothing. For you, nothing. I thought this was your wish, to sacrifice yourself? But if we can question Han-Sashael’s spirit, and gain proof that Mashti is innocent, then the Ahemmusa will make atonement to her, and lift her exile.”  
  
He nodded, stone faced.  
  
“Then we are done here.” She began gathering her robes, as if to stand. “Are we not?”  
  
Iriel watched Julan’s gaze drop to his knees again, and groaned inwardly.  
  
 _Of course he won’t. Of course he can’t do it, can’t ask for something purely for himself. Of course he’s not there yet. Of course he’ll screw everything up now, right at the last moment._  
  
That was when Iriel detected the part of himself that was relieved by this, and so that was when all his other parts had to hurl themselves at it, and try to kick it and smother it to death.  
  
But meanwhile, Sinnammu was watching Julan, too, and she took pity on him. “Julan Kaushibael, do you wish to be Ahemmusa?”  
  
His chin shot up. “I do. Please. I don’t need a warrior’s test, or an initiation. I don’t care what I am to you. I’ll herd guar, gather wickwheat, do whatever’s needed. Just give me a chance. Please.”  
  
“Then your test is the harder one. The test of the living, not the dead. Of proving yourself worthy of us, one day at a time.”  
  
Dutadalk, leaning on his staff, gave a dry cough to gain the room’s attention. “The ill-will of the ancestors is a heavy curse,” he creaked. “Surely the tribe cannot risk their displeasure by–”  
  
“Guarshit!!” Iriel could no longer contain himself. “Fuck letting a bunch of dead people, most of whom never even met him, who have no clue what he’s been through or how hard he’s worked… fuck letting  _them_  decide what he deserves!”  
  
Sinnammu shuffled slowly around and looked at him. He tried not to let her piercing gaze throw him off. “Ancestors are literally just dead people!” he yelled. “They’re not inherently wise, or virtuous, or objective, just… dead! Idiots like the rest of us, only with less connection, less emotion, and you need those to understand  _anything_  properly!”  
  
They’d all swivelled to face him, now, but he didn’t care. “Ancestors are loyal to the tribe because you’ve bound them up in a box! He was loyal to you his whole life, when he didn’t have to be, when he got nothing but mockery and pain in return! Yes, he’s got issues, how could he not? Yes, he can be reckless and self-destructive! He cares so much about everything that he’d rather get himself hurt than do anything by half!”  
  
“Outlander,” drawled Dutadalk portentously, “You cannot possibly understand–”  
  
“Understand what?! How badly he’s behaved in the past?” Ire snorted with laughter. “Are you fucking kidding me? I wish I could forget! Because then he might finally stop trying to make up for it, stop kicking himself for every mistake he’s ever made!”  
  
He was babbling now, but there was no help for it, once he’d started. “Listen, I completely understand why you might be hesitant to take him on. It’s absolutely true he can be irritating and provocative. And I’m not just talking about the atrocious tavern songs he insists upon singing, I mean, look at him. Mara spare us, but this man is dangerously hot, which is honestly unfair, and thoroughly irresponsible, especially on long journeys into isolated–”  
  
 _You’re doing the thing again, Ire!_  part of his brain chittered frantically.  _Stop doing the Hiranel thing!_  
  
He stopped, but the wave of panic didn’t recede until he looked over and saw Julan’s face. Iriel realised he’d never seen that look of too-astonished-to-even-be-embarrassed, bewildered awestruck gratitude before, and Ire felt suddenly terrible about that.  
  
Mamaea opened her mouth, but Ire didn’t let her begin. “I also need to warn you,” he said, “about the way he pretends to be stupid and ignorant, while secretly memorising everything you say or do, so he can use it against you, later. I… I can categorically state that… he never lets anything go. He can nurse a grudge forever. He will cling to something… no matter how ridiculous, worthless or petty… when all reason or hope is long dead, when any sensible person would have given up long ago.”  
  
To maintain his composure, he transferred his gaze to Sinnammu, who was still wearing that faint, inscrutable smirk. “Please,” he said, “Don’t listen to the dead, they don’t know him at all. Listen to me, who adores him, and who would  _be_  dead, dead by a thousand things, a thousand times, if not for his bravery, selflessness, dedication and love.”  
  
Dutadalk thumped his staff, and was about to return fire, amid loud murmurs from outside the yurt, but Sinnammu held up a hand for silence. “Clan! Guests! Enough. All of your words hold some truth in them.”  
  
When all was still again, she slowly lowered her hand. “Our ancestors are a beloved and respected part of this tribe,” she said. “They are the doorway to our proud and story-filled history, and all the wisdom preserved in it. They are our devoted kin, the closest links in the unbreakable chain of hearts and souls, down the generations. And yet, the dead are not like the living. We love them, we honour and remember them. We ask their counsel, and listen to their advice. But the dead are in another place. They no longer understand this world, as we do. For the present belongs to the living, and when it comes to the present, the living must choose.” She gave a nod, slow and final. “I will put the matter to the tribal vote.”  
  
Julan sighed noisily, hopes dashed. “It’ll fail. They hate me.”  
  
“Then you must work harder, until the next time I ask, and the next. Can you do this?”  
  
He stopped moving, eyes bright. “I can.”  
  
“Are you sure this is your wish? It will not be glamorous, I assure you. It will not be heroic. It may take many years, before you are trusted, and one mistake may mean beginning again.”  
  
“I’m sure.”  
  
“Good. We shall need ones with such strength, to help us forwards.” With that, she beckoned to Dutadalk, and shuffled from the yurt, followed by the rest.  
  
Once they were alone, Julan sagged forwards, hands at his neck, breath coming heavily. Ire rushed to his side, hissing a softly scolding diatribe as he made him lie flat again. Julan was grinning through the pain, pulling Iriel’s head into his chest as Ire made faint noises of protest, kissing his ear and whispering into it: “Thank you for the reference, Iya.”


	193. shared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the Obligatory Beach Episode!

For as long as he had known Celegorn, Iriel had known about the Words. That a central part of Cel’s daily rituals was the Writing of his Words. That for one blissfully peaceful hour, the Bosmer would retreat to his room, lock the door, and vanish from Ire’s consciousness, save for faint scribbling sounds, and occasional screeches for someone to fetch him more paper or pencils.  
  
Later, Iriel would hear him emerge, arms laden with paper, heading for the furnace, where he would stuff them all inside. If anyone tried to read them, he would twitch his ears and hiss.

Insomuch as he gave the matter the slightest thought, Iriel had assumed he wrote poetry. Probably the angry, incoherent kind favoured by some of Ire’s edgier friends in the Imperial City, involving a lot of swearing and capital letters. Or perhaps political manifestos, which, in Ire’s mind, were indistinguishable from the poetry.   
  
As it turned out, he’d been wrong. Cel’s words were just that. Words.  
  
“Sometimes he gets one stuck in his head, yeah?” Bodu informed him, digging an elbow into the yielding armrest of his sand-moulded beach throne. “And then he can’t get it out till he writes it enough times. Then it comes out, and he can burn it, he says.”  
  
Leaning on the outside of the sand-throne, cupping a pipe in his hands, Iriel wrinkled his nose. “Like when you write a word so many times, you start to doubt whether it’s really a word, and not just a meaningless jumble of noises and letters?”  
  
“Kinda.” Bodu extended his jaw, the better to scrape something off his tusk with a thumbnail. “Except kinda the other way around.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Ah, forget it.”  
  
Since the Ahemmusa had no paper, and refused to spare him animal hides, Celegorn had been forced to adopt an entirely new paradigm. For the first time, he was making his words public. Now, everyone could share in the Words.  
  
“BODU!” Cel’s shout echoed up from the shoreline. “How many Bs?”  
  
Bodu squinted down the twilit beach, to where Cel had scraped the letters GIB across the damp sand, with a stick. “Two, bro,” he called. “Then it’s, like, an E, I think?” He slid a glance at Iriel, who nodded.  
  
Celegorn’s prized  _Imperial Dictionary of the Tamrielic Language_  hadn’t made it to the Grazelands, but he was making up the deficit with crowdsourcing.  
  
“I don’t see why it matters how he spells it,” Ire muttered to Bodu. “As long as he thinks it looks right, who cares what the dictionary says?” He took a final drag on the kreshweed, and passed the clay pipe to Ulabael on his other side.  
  
Bodu yawned. “Nah, pal, he’s got to get the letters right, that’s part of it.” He scratched vaguely at the back of his head. “He says it’s somethin’ about forcing the sounds back into a normative ontology an’ trapping them in a coercive framework of imposed meaning.”  
  
Ire stared at him, until the smoke burned his lungs, and he broke into an explosive cough. “You two are fucking weird,” he choked.  
  
Celegorn finished “GIBBET” and started on “SPOONS”, his pale form swaying and spinning against the darkening sea. Shani was next to him, hair aflame with the last of the sunset, dancing in and out of the surf on her toes. She claimed not to read, but when Celegorn let her, she would help him copy out the words, imitating the letter-shapes in the sand, until he was satisfied. Doing it this way had been her idea, once she’d understood the purpose. “You can make them,” she’d said, “and then let the sea eat them, when the tide comes in. I do it with pictures all the time.”  
  
“IRIEL!”  
  
Ire winced, but flailed an answering hand in Cel’s direction. “The fuck d'you want?”  
  
“HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SPELL ‘CHITINOUS’?”  
  
“Wha’ the fuck makes you think I know how the fuck to spell 'chitinous’?”  
  
“You fucking look like a fucking man who knows how the fuck to spell 'chitinous’!”  
  
“Fuck you!”  
  
Cel maintained that yurts were fundamentally flawed, in terms of security, and he refused to trust them with his valuables. As a result, some fourteen knives, of various shapes and sizes, hung from his belt. (As did a small pair of shorts, to Ire’s infinite relief.)  
  
Julan had asked, once, where one of these knives had come from. Cel had beamed at his interest. “This pretty thing,” he’d said, “I found buried deeeeeep, six feet deep in the mud at the bottom of the Balmora river!”  
  
“What in Oblivion were you doing down there?” Julan had demanded.  
  
“Looking for knives!”  
  
Julan had ground his jaw. “That… checks out,” he’d said, reluctantly.  
  
As Cel sprinted up the beach towards him, arms held out, Ire began frantically chanting letters at him like a warding spell. With a gleeful hop, Cel returned to the surf, twirling his stick like a majorette.  
  
He no longer had access to moon sugar, but endless space to run around and scream in, coupled with the sea air, and Ulabael’s equally endless supply of kreshweed, seemed to be providing some counterbalance.  
  
He looked happier than Ire had ever seen him.  
  
Bodu passed Iriel the bottle of greef. Ire was about to hand it on without drinking, when the knot of worry in his chest twinged and tightened, changing his mind. He took a long pull, swallowed, almost retched, then spat out a fly. “Here,” he told Ulabael, as he passed it to him. “I sieved it for you.”  
  
Ulabael nodded his thanks from the sand. He lay flat on his back with a serene smile, long black hair fanning out around him like a halo of void. “Ads is far too mature for beach drinking,” Ulabael had smirked, when Iriel had asked if his partner Addammus would be joining them. “He is the old and sensible one, and I am the unrespectable youth with the bad habits.”  
  
Shani was running towards them, now. “Hey!” she shouted at Bodu. “You’re in my throne! Get out of my throne!”  
  
“Ah, c'mon…” Bodu protested, as she pulled at his arm. “You weren’t using it!”  
  
“Get out, before I kick you out!”  
  
“You’d kick a guy with broken legs out of a chair? That’s cold!”  
  
“I’ll break his arms, too, if he’s not careful! Out!”  
  
Much giggling and squabbling ensued, Shani forcing her way into the chair, while Bodu tried to sit on her lap, until the entire thing disintegrated into a heap of sand, limbs and howls of laughter.  
  
Iriel got up and slouched away, suddenly feeling very old, or at least, like the only adult present. Perhaps he should have stayed in the camp with Minabibi, and helped her chop herbs. Or followed Rakeem’s lead, and marched back to camp with a disapproving frown, as soon as Ulabael had produced the liquor from his gather-sack with a flourish.  
  
Only slightly unstably, he left the circle of tawny light flickering out from the ramshackle driftwood fire. He wouldn’t dream of interrupting Celegorn, so he turned inland instead, towards the point where stones and dry, leggy grasses began to clog the dingy little beach, until it was the Grazelands again.  
  
As he climbed a dune, the wind caught the back of his top - the pinkish sleeveless thing he’d found in Gnisis. It billowed out, making him shiver, and regret leaving his scarf on the beach. The day had been so hot, he’d forgotten how fast the temperature could drop, by the sea after dark.  
  
It was Last Seed. Late summer, and a full year since he’d arrived in Morrowind. In another moons’ turn, everyone said, the camp would move again. East, to where the grazing was worse, but there was more protection from the winds, and they would arrive at Vos in time for the yearly guar trading meet between the clans. Kausi was already grieving over which of his babies he had resolved to part with, changing his mind five times a day.  
  
“He’s not allowed to come with me to the trade meet any more,” Sen had said. “Or he tries to buy them all back in worse deals, as soon as my back’s turned. One year, he lost his damn shoes.”  
  
For now, Ahemmusa camp lay in the distance, the amiable glow of the buglamps and the gently clashing chords of the wind chimes inviting him closer. He was a welcome guest, he knew, had been for over a week, now. He was still uneasy around the elders and some of the more boisterous warriors, but in general, people were polite, or left him alone. Besides, he had friends. All in all, there was no reason for him to stumble around alone in the dark, fretting over things he couldn’t control.  
  
He caught his foot on a tussock, steadied himself again on a boulder.  _Yet here we are again._  
  
The area around him, between the camp lights and the beach fire, was quickly shadowing into an expanse of black nothing, a hole to lose himself in. He held up a hand: barely visible. _Who needs illusion spells?  
  
Even now, it’s easier here, being hidden, slipping safely into the cracks between real places, solid states. Perhaps it always will be. But… as long as I know I’m here… know who I am, and where I should be… I can keep myself together. Even when I’m alone, I can be enough for myself. But…  
  
_He looked from the beach to the clustered yurts. Then he wrapped his arms around his chest, and sighed.  
  
“Iyaaaa!” came a distant shout, and even with his hair braided back tighter than usual, he knew Julan’s silhouette.   
  
By the time Iriel reached him, Julan had dropped his pack and shield to the grass, the better to embrace him properly. Ire fell into his arms, beaming and breathless. “You shitbag!” he exclaimed. “It’s been three fucking days, I thought you were dead!”  
  
“Sorry. Between leaving the cavern with the bones, and taking them to Sinnammu, I went to see Mother. Ended up staying longer than I meant to. We… had a lot to talk about.”  
  
Iriel didn’t just police his tone of voice, he subjected it to military occupation. “Oh?”  
  
“Yeah, I…” Julan huffed warm breath into Iriel’s neck, kissed his skin then pulled away. “You’re gonna hate it, but… I forgave her.” His eyes shone dimly in the dark, with a brighter flash as they lifted to meet Ire’s.  
  
“I don’t hate it.” Ire wasn’t sure if Julan could see him smile, but he did it anyway. “I said I’d support your decision. Anyway, whatever my thoughts about your mother, I’m not going to… project things. True, the only thing I want from my mother now is for her to pretend I don’t exist, but… you and your mother aren’t me and mine. I do realise that, you know. And I understand you might want different things from yours.”  
  
Julan shrugged, and made an exhausted gesture. “I don’t know about any of that. I only know I want to forgive her. No, not even that. I know I want to be the sort of person who forgives her.” He attempted a laugh. “I guess it’s pretty selfish.”  
  
Iriel hugged him again. “Good.”  
  
“I said she’d have to accept a few things. That I’m not going to be living there with her any more. That I’m an adult, I get to make my own choices, and she can like it or shut up. That one of my choices… is you.”  
  
“What?” Ire’s chest turned to water, shapeless and spilling. “You…  _told_  her?”  
  
“Ah… yeah. She took it… better than I thought. Eye twitched hard, for a minute, then she pretended like she already knew.”  
  
Ire’s chest was bubbling, now, fizzing into his throat, bursting into a grin. “As long as she keeps to the 'shut up’ part of the deal, I don’t care.”  
  
“Actually… I think she likes you. That’s a new one. I… really don’t know what to do with that.”  
  
“Oh gods.” Ire dropped his forehead onto Julan’s shoulder. “You do realise, that’s twice as terrifying as her hating me?”  
  
At this point, Shani and Celegorn, bored of watching their handiwork get swallowed by the sea, caught sight of them, and for a while, all chance for private conversation was lost.  
  
  
  
The next few hours were spent around the fire on the beach. Iriel stretched himself out across the sand, head resting on Julan’s thighs, while Julan described his journey through the Daedra caves, answering Bodu’s eager questions, and parrying Shani’s reflexive mockery. Celegorn and Ulabael snored gently, leaving Ire to monopolise the kreshweed pipe.   
  
Ahemmusa life began early, however, so it was well before midnight when Bodu whistled for Pasha, and Shani shook the others awake long enough for them all to help each other stagger back across the grasslands to their beds.  
  
Technically, Julan no longer being Mamaea’s patient, he was still outcast, and should sleep at his mother’s camp. For his part, Ire had a borrowed bedroll in the yurt Ulabael shared with Addammus. Ire liked them well enough, but the fire was warm, and now that he and Julan had the beach to themselves, neither was in any hurry to move.  
  
Julan had been staring into the flames for some time, jaw sliding slowly back and forth. Ire reached up and poked him. “You OK, n'wah?” he rasped, in gruff imitation.  
  
Julan blinked at him, eyes slowly refocusing into the present. “Ah… yeah. I just… thought I’d feel different, you know?”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“My father. I thought if I found his body, I’d… I dunno… feel some kind of connection. That bringing his spirit home would make me feel like I was really his son, or something. When I was in the cavern, I did feel like he was… close, maybe. Trying to… I’m not sure. But later, when Sinnammu guided his soul through the Waiting Door, she told me he… said things.”  
  
Ire tried to sift the emotion from Julan’s vacant tone, but obtained too little to analyse. “Bad things?” he ventured.  
  
“No! No… good things. Things a father should say. That it should make me feel better, to hear, but…”  
  
“You think Sinnammu was making it up, to placate you?”  
  
“I think… it doesn’t matter. That I’m glad I brought him back, for the tribe’s sake, but none of it really makes him my father. He’s just this man I hardly knew. But… maybe that’s all right.”  
  
His eyebrows jerked upwards. “Anyway,” he said, breaking into a grin, “some of my relatives are easier to find. At my mother’s, I met Fedura.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“My grandmother.”  
  
“Oh! You mean Talammu?”  
  
Julan laughed. “Talammu’s not her name, that just means 'grandmother’. Although, from what she told me, it’s as accurate as any other of her names. Seems like deceiving your children runs in my family.”  
  
Ire wrinkled his nose. “I thought she was supposed to be some sort of… kidnapped Redoran noblewoman, or something.”  
  
“I know. So did my mother.” Julan was wearing a smirk of indescribable smugness. “Funny story, actually. Turns out, she was never any kind of noblewoman. She was a slave, owned by an Ald'ruhn clothier, whose cart overturned in the Ashlands, leaving her the only survivor. When she saw the Urshilaku coming, she put on the fine clothes they were carrying, in the hope they’d seek a ransom, instead of killing her. By the time the tribe realised no one was coming for her, she’d charmed half the camp, and the ashkhan made her his wife.”  
  
Ire glared up at him through a haze of kreshweed smoke. “Julan, if anything, that makes her story even more horrible than it already was! Stop looking so happy about this, just because your mother was lied to!”  
  
“Ah, but that’s not all.” His eyebrows waggled, mysteriously. “I always hated my name, because it wasn’t Velothi. All Mother would tell me was that when she named me, she was furious with her own people. She’d been exiled by both the Urshilaku and the Ahemmusa, and she decided she’d name me for Molag Bal before she’d name me for any of them. The only people she still cared about were her mother and sister, and, well, I was a boy. But she remembered her mother used to tell stories about her brother, who’d been a brave and noble warrior, and whose sudden death at a young age broke her heart. So Mother named me for him, instead.”  
  
“Hold on. Your grandmother was a slave, but she somehow had a noble Redoran brother?”  
  
“No. She lied about that, too.”  
  
“You were named after a lie?”  
  
“Not exactly. Julan existed, Fedura told me, but he wasn’t her brother, and he wasn’t Redoran. Did you never realise, she asked my mother, that Julan isn’t a proper Dunmeri name? What do you mean, my mother said, it is city-Dunmeris, it means 'benefit’, or 'blessing’, like the name of the gah-julan armour style. And my grandmother made this odd face, and said, well yes, technically it means that. But in the cities, the most common usage is something closer to 'servant’, or 'helper’. Or 'the help’.”  
  
Realisation dawned, and Ire’s eyes widened. “It’s a slave-name.”  
  
Julan’s teeth flashed again in the firelight. “An Argonian slave-name. Mother was  _horrified_.”  
  
Ire snorted. “Ohhh, I see. So that’s why you’re happy.”  
  
“I’m not  _just_ happy because Mother got a scrib up her skirt! I’m happy because I never wanted to be named after some fancypants Redoran noble. This is far better. Especially as it means so much to my grandmother. Julan was no warrior, she said, but he  _was_  brave, and he  _did_  die young, in the cart crash. They’d grown up as slaves together, and she loved him a lot. She was deeply moved that I shared his name, even if it wasn’t his real, Argonian one.”  
  
“I’m happy for you,” Iriel told him. “Especially since you’ll have plenty of time to become the Ebon Crest, now that you don’t have to be Nerevar any more.”  
  
The joke was out of his mouth before he could stop it, but fortunately for Ire, Julan didn’t flinch. He even laughed, weakly, then quietened, a pensive look returning to his face.  
  
“I mean… that’s over,” Iriel prompted, suddenly wary. “Isn’t it?”  
  
“What is?”  
  
“All this prophecy guarshit… everything that’s not… not lying in your lap, a little drunk, and a lot high, all under some very pretty stars.”  
  
Julan didn’t reply for a while, his fingers slipping into Iriel’s hair and idling across his scalp. Then: “Why would it be over?” he said softly. “Aren’t you going to show the Moon-and-Star to the Urshilaku, and–”  
  
Iriel’s head jerked out of his lap, twisting to stare at him. “Why the fuck would I do that?! Sweetheart, I told you! It’s a scam, a piece of empty metal!”  
  
“So you say, but… how can you be sure?”  
  
“Try it on yourself, if you don’t believe me!”  
  
“And if you’re wrong, and I die? Explode into a big, bloody mess of 'Told you so’?”  
  
Ire let his head fall back. “Gods, I wouldn’t put it past you, just to spite me. No, I suppose you’d better not try it. That scheming shitbag Azura would zap you herself, purely to teach us a lesson.”  
  
“Better watch your tongue, or you’ll be the one getting cursed.”  
  
“She can come and do it to my fucking face, then.”  
  
Iriel narrowed his eyes at the constellations, sprawling out above them in all their wild, deceptive beauty and mindless cosmic machinations. “Fuck prophecies,” he said. “Fuck stars, fuck bloodlines. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things, you know, but nothing will ever convince me that any of us was  _born_ to do anything, or that the circumstances of your birth dictate your existence. And you know what?” He wobbled a finger at Julan “That would still be true, even if one of us  _was_  Nerevar reborn. Even if we had his soul, it wouldn’t fucking matter, it wouldn’t mean we had to do anything! Let alone climb a fucking live volcano and try to kill a diseased demigod!”  
  
“OK.” Julan stroked his hair in a soothing manner. “Let’s say I believe you.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Let’s say you’re completely right about everything you just said.”  
  
“Thank you, I am.”  
  
“Let’s do it anyway.”  
  
“Exactl– … _what?_ ”  
  
Julan’s hand slid down Ire’s brow and traced the side of his face. “What if we didn’t do it because of a prophecy, or a curse, or Imperial blackmail, or anything like that. What if we did it because it was the right thing to do, and somebody has to?”  
  
Iriel looked up at him, transfixed by the flame in his eyes, the steel in his voice. He said nothing, but pressed his own hand over the rough fingers cupping his cheek.  
  
“We could do it,” Julan was saying. “We’ve done so much already, climbed so many mountains, what’s one more? We’ve broken into Dwemer vaults, defeated great evils.” His voice softened. “There’s so much suffering. I know we can’t fix everything, but we can’t fix anything, unless we try. Don’t you want to change things? You said you were too scared, but that’s not true. You’re the bravest person I know.”  
  
Iriel’s brow contracted in disbelief, but Julan smoothed it with his thumb. “You’re scared all the time,” he said, “and you do things anyway. So let’s do this, Iya. I can be strong when I’m with you, and I know you can, too. Together, we can be strong enough.”  
  
Ire stared at him a moment longer, then closed his eyes, giggling helplessly. “Gods,” he gasped. “You almost had me! With that ridiculous romantic cliché! You just looked so… heroic, there, for a moment!”  
  
Julan’s mouth pulled into an embarrassed half-smile. “It’s funny,” he said. “I grew up believing I had to be a hero, but I didn’t know how. And now–”  
  
“Because real people aren’t heroes!” Ire interrupted, a reckless gesture sending his pipe flying out of his hand. “Heroes are symbols, fictional characters! Even the ones based on real people probably bear no relation to who they actually were!”  
  
“I think you’re wrong. I think it’s like what you said about kindness. Being a hero is when you don’t have to do something, when it’s not your job, or your duty, or your responsibility, but you do it anyway. And even if you’re right, even if heroes  _are_ just symbols in stories… maybe Morrowind needs this story. Maybe the Nerevarine needs to be closer to the Ebon Crest than… whoever Indoril Nerevar really was, when he was alive.”  
  
“I’m too fucking high for this. Or not high enough. What are you suggesting, exactly?”  
  
“Neither of us is Nerevar,” Julan said slowly. “Because whatever happened to his soul, Nerevar was a certain person, at a certain time. He was unique.”  
  
“Right, and he’s dead! Gone, disappeared, body decayed to ashes and rot, memory dissolved into magic and void! Let him stay dead! Why can nobody be allowed to rest, in this country?”  
  
“Iya, just listen. We aren’t Nerevar, but we don’t need Nerevar. Morrowind needs the Nerevarine. The Nerevarine is a hero, but if you’re right, and heroes aren’t people, that means the Nerevarine doesn’t need to be a person. At least… not  _one_  person. It doesn’t matter who they are, if the story is what will be remembered. We could… do things that leave the right legend behind. We could  _create_  a Nerevarine.”  
  
Iriel’s expression could have tangled wool. “You make us sound like those horrible children in Ebonheart, with a fake corpse in a cart.”  
  
“Hah! Maybe! I don’t think either of us could do it alone. It’s going to take both of us to push it.”  
  
“You’re… that’s…” Iriel gave up on finding the right words. “Listen, love,” he said. “You know I don’t say things like this lightly. But you’re  _completely insane_.” Rolling out of Julan’s lap, he went hunting for his pipe, and stonewalled any attempt to return to the topic.  
  
  
As midnight came and went, Iriel lay on his side, watching the pale ash-ghosts of the driftwood crumble, and the embers fade. Julan was behind him, an arm curled around his waist. Without turning to see his face, Ire wasn’t sure if he was still awake, but then the arm tightened, and Ire heard: “I brought the things you left at my mother’s. We could sleep right here, it’s not going to rain.”  
  
Ire recognised the hidden itch in his voice and grinned. “Why don’t I believe this has anything to do with sleeping?”  
  
“Well…” Julan pressed against him. “It’s been too long. Feels like weeks since–”  
  
“Oh, so you’ve already forgotten about when Mamaea went out for marshmerrow, and I–”  
  
“Too long since I did something for  _you_.”  
  
“Ohhh, I’m so sorry!” Iriel squirmed in his grasp, enough to tease, but not to risk actually breaking free. “I forgot, it’s all about  _yielding_ , isn’t it? So competitive, so martial. You want to be the winner at sex, do you?”  
  
“I want  _you_.”  
  
“Never fuck on a beach, you said. Always a disaster, you said.”  
  
“I’ve got a blanket, in my pack–” Julan broke off, laughing. “…not that it ever helps.” He yanked Ire’s hip towards him, rolling him onto his back. “D'you know how I know it’s always a disaster?” He pushed up Ire’s shirt and began kissing his belly, scraping teeth along soft skin that tautened as Ire arched his back. “Because,” Julan said, indistinctly, “I always end up doing it anyway.”  
  
Iriel was veering between giggles and moans. “Surely,” he gasped, “things can’t get too disastrous, with just hands and mouths?”  
  
Julan paused, halfway down Ire’s buttons. “Say that again when I’ve got so much grit on my tongue, you feel like I’m sanding you down three sizes.”  
  
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll just… hh…  pretend you’re a Khajiit.”  
  
  
Later, swaddled in the blanket with Julan dozing against his shoulder, Iriel gazed up at the night sky again.   
  
“You know,” he said dreamily, “some people believe that everyone has a soulmate. One person in all the world that is completely perfect for them, hearts joined in destiny by the stars. Romance novels are full of them.”  
  
Julan stirred. “Mhmm?”  
  
“And… I want you to know, my love…” Iriel twined his fingers in loose strands of Julan’s hair, escaping its braids across his collarbone. “…if yours ever shows up for you, I’m going to hit him with a rake. Or her, I won’t be  _sexist_ about it. They’re going to have to fucking fight me.”  
  
A sleepy chuckle. “Thought you weren’t the jealous type.”  
  
“I’m not! But I  _am_  very selfish, and I was here first.”  
  
“Uh huh. So what happens when yours turns up, then?”  
  
“Did I say I was selfish? I meant to say I’m very generous. You can share me.”  
  
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
  
The night passed. The stars, whatever their qualities and influence, faded away, and the sun rose.  
  
  
Iriel shifted awake. His head was buried deep inside the blanket roll, but when he moved, he felt cold, clammy sand grind against his bare toes. Other things began to percolate. Racer-cries, the smell of woodsmoke, and a soft, scraping, clinking sound he couldn’t identify.  
  
He sat up, fighting his head and shoulders clear of the blanket, eyes scrunched against the light.  
  
“Morning, love.” Julan was sitting a short distance away, fully dressed and bent over something. “I dug out the kettle, so there’s tea brewing.”  
  
As his eyes adjusted, Iriel saw Julan had a set of small, redware bowls in front of him. One held water, freshly boiled, judging by the steam. The others were more mysterious. The one in Julan’s hand contained a greasy, black paste, which he was stirring with a thin, bone-like implement. “When you’re ready,” he said, “I’m gonna need you to help me with something.”  
  
Iriel mashed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Help…?”  
  
Julan put down the pot, and took up a small, sharp knife, which had been resting in the water-bowl. “Yeah, I need you to hold my wrist steady for me. Stop the skin moving on this part of my forearm.”  
  
“What?” Iriel blinked. “What are you doing with that knife? And what the fuck have you got in there?”  
  
“Ink! Well, ashes and shalk-oil, but I’m pretty sure this is the right mix.”  
  
Frowning, Iriel leaned closer. “I  _thought_ I heard you discussing ink with Ulabael, last night.”  
  
“Mm. He dropped by this morning, before he went to check his scrib-traps. Lent me his kit, told me the basics. You mark lines with the dagger, and dots with the awl, then rub ink into the wound, so it binds into the scar. Slowly, so you can’t use healing spells.”  
  
“Sweet Mara.” Iriel watched in horrified fascination, as Julan rolled up his left sleeve and skimmed the fine hair off the back of his forearm with the blade. “You’re really going to… wh…”  
  
Abruptly, he narrowed his eyes at Julan. “Is all this because you’re still scared the Urshilaku might want to mark me, and then I’d have tattoos before you? Because I never agreed we were even going back, so–”  
  
“No! …OK, maybe. But only a little. It’s  _almost_  completely not about that.”  
  
“I see. So… what are you going to… mark?”  
  
Julan picked up the bone-thing Iriel supposed must be the awl, and washed it off in the water. “I was thinking… sort of an arrowhead design. Kind of like a hunt-band mark, representing a bond between people who’ve fought and killed together. I don’t have a hunt-band, but… I have you. I want to mark it.”  
  
“I don’t want you to define our bond by who we’ve killed together!” Iriel’s face was such a picture of distress that Julan almost laughed.  
  
“It’s not really about that!” he said. “It’s more about… I dunno… success and failure. Mistakes, too, and guilt. Shared blood and spilled, and bearing the consequences.”  
  
“Is that a real Ashlander thing, or did you just make all that up?”  
  
“I’m a real Ashlander, so if I made it up, it’s a real Ashlander thing.”  
  
“You don’t need to make your own up, now. You’ll have proper ones, someday.”  
  
“I know. That’s why I want this one to be first.”  
  
“Wait, so… shouldn’t I have one too?”  
  
“Well… only if you want. I know you hate pain, so I wasn’t going to–”  
  
“Of course I fucking do, stop coddling me.”  
  
“OK.”  
  
“I’ll scream and cry, but you have to ignore me.”  
  
“OK.”


	194. dusk

Iriel realised they were no longer alone in the Ghostgate corridor when an Ordinator’s face appeared behind Julan’s shoulder, his unhelmeted sneer even more acidic than the one on the golden face beneath his arm. “Disgusting,” he hissed. The deep, grey lines converging around his mouth reminded Ire of the Red Mountain map they’d passed in the entrance hall of the citadel.  
  
Iriel tried to straighten his shirt, but the beading had caught on his jacket. He settled for straightening Julan’s instead. “I’m so sorry, officer,” he gasped. “We didn’t mean to… we really weren’t…”

In contrast to Iriel, neither arrest nor imprisonment had managed to instil in Julan even a façade of respect for Ordinators. “What d'you just say?” he said, far too loudly. “I didn’t quite hear you. What’s disgusting?”  
  
“We were just leaving! Going to find our room in the hostel!” intervened Iriel desperately. “Rooms, I mean.” His hands kept reflexively trying to cling to Julan, so he forced them to his sides.  
  
“Good.” The guard’s frown deepened. “Before I think of something worse than public indecency to charge you with.”  
  
“Indecency?” Julan’s grin had teeth in it. Which is normal, for a grin, and shouldn’t make it sound menacing, but it does, and it was.  
  
The door to the nearby bar-room opened, filling the hallway with the raised voices of Dunmer men, harsh, raucous and numerous.  
  
Iriel began to sweat.  _Oh gods please don’t say we spent days hiking through dangerous wastelands in lung-clogging ashstorms, only to celebrate our safe arrival a little too visibly, and get ourselves beaten to death by Ordinators. At least he hasn’t recognised us as wanted criminals. Yet.  
  
_ He jabbed Julan in the arm, but evidently his intended message of  _shut the fuck up idiot_   _don’t you dare pick this battle we do not need this battle put this battle down immediately_  got lost in translation. Julan was already saying, even louder than before: “I don’t understand. What indecency?”  
  
“Get out of here, Relas!” a man shouted from the bar doorway, his glittering arm around the neck of another emerald-clad warrior. A red crest of hair drooped rakishly over one eye, dishevelled from spending all day in a helmet. “Take your tin-plated ass back to the Tower of Dawn! The Armigers are celebrating tonight!”  
  
The Ordinator flinched, and swivelled to address the intruders. “For all that the…  _rules_ … of your order take precedence in this Tower,” he rasped, “these men are not Armigers, and cannot be–”  
  
“Get blight, Relas!” slurred another voice from inside the bar. “Nobody cares.”  
  
The Ordinator’s eyes bulged. “It is my duty as–”  
  
“B'vek, but you’re dull.” There were four of them in the doorway, now, all sweat-stained smarm and glass armour in stages of disarmament. “Go tell it to the Archcanon, s'wit!”  
  
Iriel was struggling to process the balance of power, couldn’t bring himself to put faith in this unexpected support, even as it flooded him with giddiness.  _Surely we’ll be the ones to pay for this, later?_    
  
“I’m so sorry–” he started.  
  
Julan smirked. “I’m not.”  
  
Ire pressed a hand over his mouth. “Yes, he is.”  
  
Julan squirmed, and bit him. “You can’t make me be sorry,” he said, through Iriel’s squeals of protest.  
  
“I can,” Ire told him with a glare that barely masked the nervous giggling fit he was tipping into, “and you know it.”  
  
The Ordinator, concerned he might no longer be the centre of their attention, cleared his throat. Ire tried to control his hysteria. “We… honestly… don’t– we were just–” he spluttered, wrenching Julan’s hand from his ear.  
  
“What’s the problem, Relas?” the redheaded Armiger called. “Don’t you know a wrestling match when you see it? Sure you’re not the one with the dirty mind, here, seeing so much indecency everywhere?”  
  
Ire waited for the Ordinator to retaliate, but he was silent, cheeks flushed purple with impotent anger.  
  
Julan chimed in, now. “Yeah! We were fighting!”  
  
“Right!” Ire heard himself exclaim. “Manly pursuits! I honestly can’t stand him at all, you know.”  
  
“He’s a filthy n'wah,” sneered Julan, “and he insulted my mother.”  
  
Ire nodded, eyes wide. “It’s true. But he  _complimented_ my mother. I can’t let that pass without a challenge.”  
  
And then the Armigers were laughing, and waving them over, and the clawing terror receded, because somehow, impossibly, they had won.  
  
“Very important part of Ashlander culture, challenges,” Julan was telling the redhead, with a conspiratorial smirk. “Almost as important as our oral tradition.”  
  
Ire pouted. “If you keep criticising my jokes and then stealing them to flirt with other people,” he said, “I’ll have to challenge you again.”  
  
“Sport or honour?” demanded an older Dunmer, broken-line tattoos around his eyes crinkling in amusement.  
  
Julan raised an eyebrow. “Dunno about him, but I’m not feeling too honourable, right now.”  
  
“Whichever it is,” Ire told him, in mock-severe tones that disintegrated into laughter, word on word, “I’m  _very_  insulted. I shall be forced to demand  _complete_  satisfaction!”  
  
He didn’t even see the Ordinator grind his jaw and turn away, or the scowl he gave to the man who goosed him, as he passed the bar-room door.  
  
  
  
An hour later, Iriel was extremely drunk, though barely even from the alcohol. Not that there hadn’t been alcohol.  
  
The door crashed open, and yet another warrior reeled in, tearing off his goggles and tubed mouthguard. “Big bad fetcher of a blightstorm out there!” he roared, shaking out his hair.  
  
Ire’s head lurched upwards. “I KNOW, RIGHT?” he yelled. “YOU CAN HARDLY SEE YOUR DICK IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!!!”  
  
A nearby Armiger gave him a scar-threaded grin. “Sure that was  _your_ dick you were seeing there, f'lah?”  
  
Ire rounded on him. “WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING ABOUT MY DICK?!”  
  
He’d never felt this way before in his life. As if he were high on the very air around him, inhaling so much he might fill up and float away.  
  
Shortly after they arrived, an Armiger who’d missed the commotion outside had squinted at them from the far side of the room. “Saints!” he’d exclaimed “What’ve we got here, an Ashlander? With… an Altmer? What’s that, some noble he’s taken hostage?”  
  
Julan, ever-adaptable to the spirit of tavern banter, had sent him a beaming smile. “Only in bed!” he’d shouted, to crowing approval. “I have to play the hostage, though, he’s better at knots.”  
  
Ire had nodded modest agreement, pretending to dab at his eyes as he made his way to the bar. “ Fisherman’s son, you know,” he’d murmured. “My pa’d be so proud.”  
  
The Armigers were celebrating their return from a successful raid on the Sixth House citadel of Endusal. Successful, in that an Ash Vampire had been slain, and all warriors had returned safely. Only the highest ranked Armigers had been assigned to the mission, identifiable now by their armour decorated with prestigious glass, mined from the heart of Red Mountain. Many were still wearing it, to one extent or another, as they lounged around the bar, surrounded by worshipful junior Armigers, clad in sturdy but mundane chitin. The victors’ stories of terror and triumph increased in grandeur by the bottle.  
  
At least, they did until Julan enquired, innocently: “So, d'you manage to retrieve the tools?”  
  
Drunk as she was, the grizzled Armiger captain’s silvering brows twitched. “Tools?”  
  
“Kagrenac’s tools,” said Julan, casually but clearly, holding her gaze. “The profane Dwemer artifacts that the Tribunal used on the Heart of Lorkhan, to steal–”   
  
“Enough!” The captain silenced him with a slap of her hand on the table, startling the smallest Armiger-apprentice, and ruining his attempt to drink from Iriel’s unattended mazte bottle. “We know the lies you Ashlanders tell about our gods, but no person of faith will listen.” She snorted air down her long, broken nose. “And the existence of the Heart, and Kagrenac’s tonal implements is known to those who have studied the Dwemer, and walked their halls. But… ” Her eyes narrowed. “Some things you should  _not_  know.”  
  
“I’ll bet,” Julan smirked. “Imagine what panic it would cause, if  _normal_  people knew that the Tribunal had lost access to the source of their divine powers? That ten years ago, they lost two out of three of the profane tools to Dagoth Ur, in battle? That they can’t get them back, because their power is waning, and it’s all they can do to maintain the Ghostfence? That the Sharmat is winning this war?”  
  
The captain checked the door was shut, before she spoke. “Who are you?”  
  
Julan shrugged. “Just someone who read a few documents recently, in the secret Temple library vaults.”  
  
She gaped, while he drained his mazte bottle. “You…broke into…?!”  
  
Iriel nodded. “Oh, yes. We’ve had a lot of practice. Your shocked expression tell me that you haven’t, which is why we might have more luck retrieving the tools than you.”  
  
“Then you realise,” she said, “that this has been the central goal of all military units stationed at Ghostgate for the last decade? The oldest Dwemer strongholds, Odrosal and Vemynal… they are impregnable.”  
  
“Like he said, we’re pretty good at breaking and entering,” Julan told her, demonstrating on another bottle.   
  
“Who  _are_  you,” she asked, again. “Clearly, it cannot be anything honourable.”  
  
They exchanged glances.  
  
“Do you know,” Iriel said, “the prophecies of the Nerevarine?”  
  
She frowned. “The deluded heretics, hunted by the Temple?”  
  
“OK then,” Julan interjected quickly, “ever heard of the Bal Molagmer?”  
  
“I… think my house-mother used to tell me stories,” she said, her voice softening. “Noble thieves, who took from the undeserving, and gave to the deserving?”  
  
“Right!”  
  
“And you two are such thieves?”  
  
“If you like,” said Ire lightly. “Or we could be Nerevarines, if you decide you want one, after all. He thinks that stuff matters more than I do.”  
  
“Please,” Julan groaned. “Not this blighted argument again. I thought we decided!”  
  
Ire took an erratic sip of his drink. “We reached certain points of agreement, as part of an gong…ongoing debate.”  
  
Julan rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He tapped his fingers on the table, trying to ignore Nam, the smallest Armiger, who had crawled tipsily beneath it, and was getting under his feet. “I had this idea. I thought we should invent an imaginary Nerevarine. Convince everyone that they were going to save Vvardenfell, talk them up as a hero, say whatever people wanted to hear, but better.”  
  
“He was going to have  _my_  eyes,” Iriel trilled, “and  _your_  hair, and the most  _adorable_  little–”  
  
Julan flicked the mazte-cork at him. “SHUT THE FUCK UP. And not my hair, never my hair. Gah! Nam, get off my leg!”  
  
The Armiger captain rubbed her brow in bemusement, as Julan struggled to regain his place in his explanation. “Nibani Maesa thinks the prophecy calls for a Hortator, a warleader. So we were going to go round all the Ashlander tribes, and the bigwigs in the Great Houses, and try to get their support. We’d get… I dunno, a really distinctive full-face helm or something, and each time, we’d pick whichever of us we thought would appeal to them more, to play the part of a hero. Or get our friends to help, if neither of us would work.”  
  
“I do still think,” Ire remarked, “that Shani would have been perfect to handle Dratha.”  
  
“Listen, it’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that giving Sha that kind of power is like giving a Scamp the reins to your guar-cart. The distance it gets you isn’t worth the wreckage it leaves in its path.”  
  
“Anyway!” Iriel flapped a hand. “I thought it was all completely stupid. A total waste of time.”  
  
“It could have worked!”  
  
“That’s not the point! I’ve spent far too much of my life letting other people take credit for my work.” Ire caught the eye of the captain, which had begun to wander. “You can say we’re Bal Molagmer or Nerevarines, either or both of us, I don’t care. As long as you remember that he’s Julan Kaushibael, outcast Ashlander of the Ahemmusa tribe, and I’m Iriel of Lillandril, Ouster and exile of Summerset. The people of Morrowind can take us or leave us, we know who we are. And whether they like it or not, we’re going through the Ghostfence to help in the fight against Dagoth Ur.”  
  
She blinked, slow and sleepy with drink. “So… you plan to steal the tools from the Sharmat’s minions, and return them to the Three?”  
  
Another glance passed between them.  
  
“Well…”  
  
“…Possibly.”  
  
“We’re still arguing about that one.”  
  
The captain’s face went through a series of expressions, but settled on ‘too drunk for this shit’. “If you would truly cross the Ghostfence, and kill our enemies,” she said, “come to my office tomorrow afternoon, and I will give you copies of our most recent maps and reports. You will die, but since all must die, I will not stop you doing it nobly.” She wobbled to her feet, and went off in search of more diverting company.  
  
  
A little while after she’d gone, a mischievous teenage face appeared over the edge of the table, and slithered bonelessly into her empty chair. Darting across the table, Nam seized Iriel’s right hand, and Julan’s left, pulling them both towards him. He twisted and turned them, peering at the matching designs emerging from their sleeves, raised and scarred, but now mostly healed.  
  
“The hand of a thief must always be empty,” he said, “because he must put new things into it. This way, no one can know his weapon, until he strikes.” He smiled, eyes bright. “What will you put into yours, I wonder? What will you strike?”  
  
Julan squirmed in exasperation, as Nam’s fingers tickled and tugged at his skin. “You Armigers are all so strange,” he said. “Ordinators are Temple warriors too, but you couldn’t be more different.”  
  
Nam shuffled his shoulders in a shrugging sort of dance, lower lip extended. “They are merely necessary, a critical fixation with dead gold. We are the true heretics, romantic fools who do the impossible.”  
  
Julan laughed. “Then… me and him, we’re Armigers, too.”  
  
Ire raised his head from the table and tipped the borrowed glass helm out of his eyes. “Buoyant as  _fuck_ ,” he slurred firmly, before letting the oversized helm slip back down.  
  
Nam beamed. “Ha, then in truth, you are Armigers! Armoured in faith and armed with love, you shall drive back the monsters that crawl from the past’s deepest wound!”  
  
Ire sniggered. “I’ve heard things about you lot. I bet your initiation is quite the experience.”  
  
Nam affected innocence. “Is not every experience an initiation into its brother, the next?”  
  
“Every drink, more like,” snorted Julan, as Nam skipped away with Iriel’s beer.  
  
  
Late, now, but regardless of the hour, and anyone else in the Tower of Dusk who might be trying to sleep, the celebration was far from over. One Armiger had produced a long, double-reeded pipe, and was buzzing out a jig in a nasal whine. Two others were shaking bell-covered rattles, and many were stamping or humming along.  
  
Others, though, were quieter, curled along wide, padded benches in pairs, or more than pairs, movements half-lost in shadows the low candlelight didn’t quite reach.   
  
Perched chastely on another bench along the opposite wall, Iriel tried not to stare, but it was far more interesting than the music. Besides, every time he’d averted his eyes too late to avoid someone’s gaze, all he’d received were languid smiles.  
  
Julan, struggling with similar issues next to him, was examining the rows of beads along his cuff, tracing them with his nail. Ire nudged him. “All right. Who here do you like, then?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I’m still trying to work out your type. I won’t be jealous, honestly.”  
  
Julan snorted. “You keep saying that, but I don’t believe you.” After a moment, he leaned closer, and indicated a direction with a nod. “That guy in Balano’s lap, though… wouldn’t kick him out my yurt…”  
  
“Oh really? What do you like about him?”  
  
“Always liked red hair…”  
  
“What, like Shani?”  
  
“Like Barenziah, maybe…”  
  
Ire rolled his eyes. “I don’t understand how hair colour has any bearing on how–”  
  
“It’s just pretty, OK? Handsome, whatever. You asked me for first impressions on the guy, not… look, he might turn out to be a right shitbag once you talk to him, I’m just–”  
  
“You like right shitbags, though. There, that’s your type.”  
  
“Sheogorath…”  
  
“You want me to wet my hair and stick it out in the blightstorm to make it red again, do you?”  
  
“I want you to shut up and stop teasing me for once in your life!”  
  
“There are ways to silence me. We could go to our room… Mind you…” Ire surveyed the happy tangles of bodies around them. “Perhaps no one would mind if we stayed right here.”  
  
Julan laughed. “You ever read that part in The Real Barenziah–”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Where she wants to join the Thieves’ Guild, but this Khajiit–”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“–right in the middle of the tavern, with everyone watchi–”  
  
“Yes. So, you want me to be the Khajiit, this time?”  
  
Julan was still laughing, but there was an uncertainty to it, as he tried to gauge the exact extent to which Iriel was joking.  
  
“Listen,” continued Ire, “it’s fine if you want to be Barenziah, but for maximum authenticity, I doubt I’m  _sharp_  enough.” He swayed to his feet. “HEY ENAR! LEND ME YOUR SPEAR! MY BOYFRIEND WANTS ME TO–MMPHGHGH!!!”  
  
Julan crushed his head lovingly into a cushion. “I’d really rather wait until later,” he hissed into his ear.  
  
Iriel sat up, and spat out a strand of kreshfibre stuffing. “Careful. I might be too drunk, later.”  
  
“Who says I meant with you? That redhead is really very–” Iriel’s eyes widened, and Julan prepared to dodge. “It was a joke!”  
  
Iriel only blinked. “Well. I mean. If you wanted to bring someone, I… wouldn’t complain. It might be interesting.”  
  
“Uh…” Again, Julan tried to read a map of the future in Ire’s face, but not all pitfalls were clearly marked. “Complicated, more like.” He glanced across the room. “Anyway, I think the cute one looks like he’s gonna be busy for with his friend for a  _while_.”   
  
  
The red-haired Armiger was, indeed, fully occupied for the night. In the end, it was Nam who returned from pirouetting along the bar and flopped himself down across both their laps at once. That said, his intentions seemed anything but salacious, genuine exhaustion in his face as his eyes slid shut. “I’m tired,” he whined. “I want to go to bed, now.”  
  
Iriel looked down at him. He’d lost his cuirass, as well as his shirt, but somehow retained his pauldrons… well, one of them. The other looked as if he’d stolen it from someone else, and his gauntlets were likewise mismatched. “All right, fine,” Ire said, feeling strangely protective of the young elf currently trying to burrow into his thighs with his face. “Where is your room?”  
  
Nam’s ear twitched, sleepily. “I don’t have one,” came his muffled response. “Can I share your bed?”  
  
“I… really… don’t think…”  
  
“Please?”  
  
On the stairs, the teenager’s knees buckled, and they had to catch him by his skinny arms. As Julan scooped him up, Iriel, sobered by concern, peered at Nam’s face in the dim torchlight. “Are you all right? You’re not ill, are you?” The young Armiger’s odd colour and shifting eyes hinted at something grimmer than alcohol at work in him.  
  
“It’s nothing,” whispered Nam, hands twisted into Julan’s shirt. “An old wound. It prevents me from staying out as long as I would like.”  
  
When Iriel unbuckled his remaining armour, he watched, lip curling in disgust. “I should not have worn this. It is too old, it makes me tired and witless. I forgot how much I hate old things.”  
  
They laid him across the end of the bed, but as soon as they were in it too, he wriggled up between them. After that, he would not be moved, writhing and whimpering if either of them stopped pressing against him. Despite this awkwardness, they were all asleep within moments.


	195. seeds

Iriel dreamed of Sadrith Mora. He saw the mushroom forest, coiling and subversive. He saw a dead, black space where Muriel’s cornerclub used to be. As he watched, the ashes began to stir, and thousands of tiny shoots emerged. Small and weedlike at first, they continued to spread and rise. By the time they began to burst into glorious, extravagant bloom, they were higher than Wolverine Hall, larger than any Telvanni tower.

  
He dreamed of the Tower. Except it wasn’t a tower, now, it was a tree, roots spreading wide across the world, leaves touching the heavens. There was lichen on his branches, moss in his bark, and, deep in his sap, he felt a prophecy of fruit. Small, bitter-sweet, but quite edible, and filled with tiny seeds, like a pomegranate.  
  
  
He dreamed of a pomegranate, lodged in the heart of a volcano. Someone behind his shoulder was giggling, he couldn’t see who.  
  
“Put your hand in,” they laughed. “Come now, your whole and entire hand.”  
  
“I can’t!” he told his invisible friend. “It won’t fit!”  
  
Endless giggling. “So they all say, at the dusk, but by the dawn…”  
  
Now he was laughing too, it was impossible not to. “You’re terrible.”  
  
Was he very large, or was the volcano very small?  
  
“Take it,” the voice urged. “It lies before you, why do you hesitate?”  
  
“It’s too hot! I’ll burn my fingers!”  
  
“Such a vassith you are, such a weeping Saliache.” The voice was light, cheerfully mocking. “Very well, I shall give you a gift, to keep your delicate nails from breaking. But only if you promise to love me, and do as I tell you, for ever and ever until the sky falls.”  
  
“Yes, yes, whatever you say.”  
  
“Swear on your honour?”  
  
“Of course!”  
  
More laughter, bubbling and tumbling, helpless as a waterfall. “How silly you are, to swear such things! Rash charity spawns endless troubles!”  
  
“You’re the silly one, to assume I have the slightest honour to swear on!”  
  
“Such a glorious fool, I shall be sure to tell all my friends. Here now, wear this.”  
  
“It looks precious! Don’t you need it?”  
  
“It does not fit me any more. Now stop your prattling mouth before I do. Come closer, and I will teach you how the thing can be done.”  
  
  
As his teeth sank into the broken flesh of the fruit, and foul poison flooded his tongue, he awoke.


	196. dawn

“What’s wrong, love?” Iriel pulled the sheet taut, and moved the pillows back into place. “Hangover from Oblivion? Or just more tangles than usual?”  
  
Julan was sitting on the end of the bed, combing his hair. He shook his head. “Pretty sure you drank more than me.”  
  
“What’s that face for, then, like you’re licking a Sload? Listen, if I’ve upset you somehow, please tell me, because I can’t–”  
  
Julan turned to Ire with a guilty start. “It’s not you!” he said. “I just feel… weird… about last night.”

Ire laughed. “About what? That Nam boy was out like a candle, and gone before I woke. Nothing even happened!” An odd sort of twitch at the corner of Julan’s mouth made him raise his eyebrows. “…Did it?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Then–”  
  
“Ai, it’s nothing, just… strange dreams.”  
  
“Gods, me too. It’s the mountain, I suppose. Or whatever they put in the ale, here.”  
  
“Really?” Julan was alert, now, scanning for something. “What did you dream? Did you… I mean… was  _he_  in it?”  
  
“Was who in it? Dagoth Ur?”  
  
“What? No!” Julan screwed up his face in a specific variety of disgust that Iriel recognised.  
  
“Ohhh, I see.” he smirked. “ _That_  sort of dream. Was it good? Do tell.”  
  
Julan only attacked his hair in silence, avoiding Iriel’s increasingly invasive pursuit of eye contact. When these escalated into attempts to sit in his lap, Julan stood up with a sigh. “I’d rather not get into it,” he said.  
  
“Why ever not?” Tipped sideways onto the bed, Ire rolled onto his stomach and smiled impishly, chin propped on interlaced fingers. “I’m unbearably curious, now.”  
  
“I know it wasn’t real, but I still feel… I dunno. Like I cheated on you.”  
  
“In a dream? Honestly, how insecure do you think I am?”  
  
Julan was flicking the comb in his fingers, lips pressed into a thin, evaluative line. “I still think you’re faking about not being the jealous type.”  
  
“Why? Because you are?”  
  
The comb-flicking slowed and grew pensive. “I guess I used to be, when I was younger. Shani used to get so mad, yelling at me that I didn’t own her. And I get that part, but I don’t get how you’re supposed to stop comparing yourself to other people, when it’s obvious they’d have more to offer someone than you.” A shrug. “Still, it was my problem, not hers. I’d like to think I’ve grown up a bit.”  
  
“Oh yes,” said Ire, “very immature habit, jealousy. So much entitlement and paranoia. We’re all completely adult and totally above that now, aren’t we?”  
  
Julan was trying to maintain a straight face. “I dunno, are you?”  
  
Ire didn’t even try. “Probably not, but wouldn’t it be lovely if I could make it true, just by saying it?” He flipped onto his back, and grinned up. “I do want to hear about your dream, though. Who were you with? That redhead?”  
  
“No…”  
  
“Nam, then?”  
  
“No! At least… not…” Julan looked genuinely panicked, and Iriel couldn’t fathom why. “I don’t know,” he whispered, after a moment. “He… didn’t look like that. Older, stronger, more… heroic. Almost like… that statue, near the Ministry of Truth.”  
  
“What, Vehk piercing the bug?”  
  
Julan’s eyes were lost, unfocused, his voice as distant as if he were still wandering through some other space. “He… we were hunting. In the Ashlands at night, the air clear, the stars all…” He made a vague, bursting gesture above him.   
  
“We were tracking a monster. I… can’t remember what, now, the fight was a blur of dust and speed and impact. He never stopped laughing. I… think I killed it for him, but when it was dead, he stabbed it with his spear, and pulled out its heart. He tore it in two, and offered me half, to eat.”  
  
“Did you take it?”  
  
“I’m not sure. After that, I only remember… his bloody mouth on mine, pushing me down. Then he was above me, smiling, and… I had glass in my eyes, ebony in my veins, ash on my tongue. I was the land, he was the air itself…”  
  
Iriel looked at him strangely. “Are you still talking about Nam?”  
  
“I… I don’t know.” Julan slumped onto the bed, rubbing his brow. “After that, the dream got ugly. I really don’t want to get into it.” He turned to Ire. “It’s like my name, you know. ‘Nam’. More of a nickname or a joke than a real name. Nam just means 'zero’. Nothing.”  
  
“And you think this is significant because…?”  
  
“Iya, did… do you remember seeing anyone else talk to him, last night? Anyone who acted like they knew he was there, except us?”  
  
“You’re being ridiculous.”  
  
“He’s disappeared, but the door’s still locked, and the key’s on the table.”  
  
“Perhaps he used a spell! Sweetheart… you really need to get over some of these weird hangups. You had a dream.”

“You said you dreamed, too.”  
  
“Yes, but… it… wasn’t… Ugh, I can barely remember.” Iriel sucked in his cheeks. “He did have strange eyes, though, that Nam boy.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
“Yes, I’d never seen a Dunmer with blue eyes. If he was even Dunmer, he almost didn’t look it, with that skin.”  
  
“What? He had red eyes. And his skin was fine, what–?”  
  
“Oh, for gods’ sake, stop trying to make me– hmm?” Ire’s dramatically flung arm had encountered a strange lump, beneath the bedclothes. He sat up, and tweaked the blanket aside. “See,” he said. “No phantoms, just a careless young warrior. Look, he left his glove.”  
  
“Glove?” Julan moved around the bed, and peered at it. Reached out to touch it… and then pulled back, eyes bulging. He made a noise in his throat, high and tight.  
  
Iriel looked at the gauntlet again, taking in the Dwemeris markings, the intricate design, made up of materials he couldn’t begin to identify. When he tried to detect the enchantments, the force of it widened his eyes to match Julan’s. As details of his dream trickled back, he put a hand to his mouth. “I remember, now.” he husked. “He… said it didn’t fit him any more.”  
  
“What in blighted Oblivion does that mean?!”  
  
“It means… that things are far worse than we thought.”  
  



	197. fire

Fire in the clouds, a flaming beast of a storm. Howling circles around the summit of Red Mountain, ready to descend in ravenous fury and devour the slopes.  
  
Iriel, on the slopes, almost wished it would. Anything to break this living mummification in a shroud of smog. Anything to know something other than the scab-red darkness, and the ash coming down. But here inside the Fence, it was always dark, and the ash always coming down.  
  
 _The moment we fall, the ash will cover us. We’ll vanish in seconds, drowned in a senseless sea of wasted life. Wasted energy._  
  
 _Perhaps in another thousand years, someone will find our relics, and wonder who we were.  
_

He adjusted his mouth-filter, but there was no stopping it. The ash was outside and inside, filling every space and coating every surface with a red that was bloody yet barren, dull with decay, a wound past all healing. Filling him up with rusty greyness, the null remainder of things long since burned and lost. _  
_  
 _Who are we? What am I?_  
  
 _The ashes of all the possibilities I set fire to along the way._  
  
 _And whether we fall or rise, the ash takes us all back, eventually._  
  
 _Nothing endures. Nothing can burn forev– Shut the fuck up, Ire! Stop thinking! Walk! All you have to do is walk!  
 _ _  
___Three days. Two on the lower slopes, where camping was still barely possible. One in the blightstorm _,_  where any shelter would have to be wrenched from the mountain itself, and so far, the mountain hadn’t given an inch. All they could do was keep going.  
 _  
_Wind in his ears, a ceaseless, hollow roar that blocked outeverything but the old, brittle monologue, creeping out of the cellar on its spindly legs again.  
 _ _  
_I can’t remember the stones. How can I, when there are no paths, everything shifting, reburying me endlessly. Only the ash drinks our tears, and ash has no memory. Ash has my memory, ashes of memories._  
  
 _Ash is eaten fire. We have been eaten and burned… no, burned and eaten. I was burned, so I burned things. Many things, far too many.  
  
_ Sweat ran down his back, beneath his protective layers. The Armigers had shown them how to sew frost-charms into their cloaks, but the heat was still relentless. The air coming through his filter smelled of charred corpses and tasted of dread. _ _ _  
  
__Nothing behind me, and nothing ahead. Past ash, future ash, what exists between, what pins me placeless, hauls me helpless?_  
  
 _An illusion. Nothing. No rudder, because no ship. There is no room for it. I am trapped between past and future in the no-space of the present which is absent, imaginary, noth–  
 _  
__Something caught his foot, and he stumbled into blind space, landing in ash that yielded so numbly, he thought himself still in mid-air. He floundered, lost. There was only the ash, he was adrift and alone. Panic crushed his chest in an airless fist.  
  
 _nothingthereisnothingnothingnothing–SHUT UP!!!_  
  
He choked a word out into the red: “Where–?”  
  
A voice, closer than he’d expected. “Hold on, I see you.”  
  
“Where are you?”  
  
“Here.”  
  
“Are you still there?”  
  
“I’m here.”  
  
“I thought you were gone.”  
  
“No.”  
  
A darker shape in the air. Fingers on his arm, a brush that slipped into a firm grip.  
  
“Can you see me?”  
  
“I’ve got you.”  
  
“Look at me. Please, I’m…”  
  
“I see you.”  
  
“Don’t look away!”  
  
“I see you.”  
  
A hand around his wrist, hauling him on through tear-muddied, gore-red fog. He followed, forcing his legs through knee-deep ash-drifts that clung, heavy as swampland, but dead, dead, dead.  
  
The red-veined clouds belched open, and burning stones began to fall, tiny glinting shards and sparking embers, the largest as big as his fist. Julan raised his shield and dragged him faster. “This way! I see something!”  
  
Harder uphill. Lungs burning, muscles burning, the air acrid with smoke. Missiles clattered on the shield above him in harsh, staccato bursts. Some struck his shoulders and arms, lighter than he feared. Charcoal, perhaps, or pumice.  
  
The ash evened out, and he saw pipes buried in it, felt firmer ground beneath him. “There’s a tower!” Julan yelled, and Ire squinted upwards past the shield, rubbing his goggles clean with his sleeve.  
  
Great shapes loomed over him, colossal metal cylinders studded with rivets and augmented by massive geometric structures, ranging from the conceivably functional to the aesthetically perverse. Statues, even. A brass-bearded Dwemer king hung bent, skewed horizontal in midair, dead-eyed and creaking in the wind.  
  
It was awe-inspiring. So much so, that he didn’t notice an ember had caught his scarf until Julan shouted, and by then, his cloak was on fire.  
  
He should have thrown himself down and rolled. Instead, blindsided by flaming panic, he clawed wildly at his face and neck, breaking the clasp of his cloak as he ripped it off, screaming as his blue silk scarf fell apart in his hands, and the wind snatched the last shreds into darkness.  
  
In that moment, he felt his soul disintegrating with it. He came a little undone.  
  
  
When Julan finally got Iriel into the shelter of the brass-panelled porch that cupped the tower’s round entrance, Ire was shaking and coughing, hyperventilating ash. He was no longer burning, but his head and neck were bare, and he’d torn the front of his shirt down to the waist.  
  
“A short season of towers,” he was reciting, eyes glassy. “A rundown absolution, and what is this, what is this, but fire under your eyelid?!”  
  
“What?” Julan tried to hold Ire’s head still long enough to check it for injury. “Your eye? It looks fine, where d–?”  
  
“The fire is mine! Let it consume thee!”  
  
“Aagh! Stop that!”  
  
As Julan hissed and worried at him, Iriel looked down at his bared chest and began to laugh. “Look!” he gasped. “I’ve given my honour to the rav'nous flame! I’ve burned everything now, everything!”  
  
His voice was rising again, breaking into shrill, jagged ribbons of sound. Julan tried to quiet him, but Ire’s laughter only grew more uneven, weighted with sobs.  
  
“My blood, my family, my beauty and wisdom! Who did I burn it for? What did I ever get for it? Was it all a false exchange, a trick? A test of devotion? To what? What?!”  
  
“It wasn’t anything, you’re just babbling. Shhh…”  
  
“Even… even my sorrow, the thing I though I’d never lose, the tears I thought would never stop… it all burns away, in the end! Everything, everything… I’ve burned all my bridges, burned all my ghosts…”  
  
“Shhh, Iya. You’re safe, nothing’s burning.”  
  
“I cursed the stars! Of course I’m doomed to lose everything, of course I’d never win my true love! My pa’d tell me I had it coming!”  
  
Julan wrapped his arms around Ire’s head. “Shhh. It wasn’t your fault.” He pulled him near, held him still. “Shhh…”  
  
  
Drained and red-eyed, Iriel watched the blightstorm rage through a crack in their small, metal shelter. Julan had found a fallen panel in the ash and propped its corrugated bulk across the porch entrance. Only swirling darkness showed through the narrow gap, but Ire stared at it anyway, transfixed.  
  
“It feels like there’s nothing else left in the world,” he whispered. “As if everything has already burned and crumbled away.”  
  
At his back, he felt Julan’s ribcage expand in a slow breath. “Not yet.”  
  
“There’ll be no going back, after we walk off this edge. Nothing will be the same.”  
  
A shrug. “That’s the whole point.”  
  
Despite the hoarseness of his throat, Ire began to sing, weak and breathy: “The dawn broke hard upon the ash, my hands were barren and blistered…”  
  
“But,” Julan interrupted gently, “the dawn broke.” His hand was on Ire’s arm, and he squeezed it. “You can’t really burn things like that, you know. Weren’t you the one who hated trite metaphors?” He gave Ire a soft but meaningful nudge. “Your pa wants to see you.”  
  
Iriel sighed. “I just… can’t picture… anything. How can you ever know what to keep and what to cast into the fire? What will warm you, and what burn you to the bone, if you let it get close to you ever again?”  
  
Julan said nothing, only held Ire tighter against him, and reached out to improve the seal on their makeshift door.  
  
“Even if we live… what will be left, after all this is over? When we sift through the ashes?”  
  
A still pause, before Julan said: “Love?”  
  
Ire couldn’t quite laugh, but he got as far as a watery smile. “As if it were a gemstone, formed once, in times of great heat and intense pressure, then perfect forever after? They give crystals as wedding gifts, back home, you know. To represent permanence and purity. Such guarshit; love is nothing like that. It’s a living thing. You have to care for it or it dies. And even then, nothing mortal lasts forever. Time eats love, desire, everything. But… the fact you would say that is part of why I love you.”  
  
“You make it all so complicated.” Julan stifled a yawn. “You sure it counts, saying you love me, now? Seems to me, brushes with flaming death should be like orgasm, under your rules. You need to be a certain distance away, before saying you love someone means anything.”  
  
Ire settled back against Julan’s chest. “I have a new rule. It’s called shut the fuck up and let people love you.”  
  
  
A little later, Julan felt movement, and glanced down. Iriel had turned away from the storm and was fumbling with the straps of his cuirass. Julan chuckled. “You getting that sexy imminent doom thing again?”  
  
“No. I don’t think that works, when it’s real. But I need to be closer to you. I need to feel your heartbeat, instead of that other one, out there.”  
  
Julan co-operated with the straps, and shrugged out of his armour. It was glass, found on an unfortunate Armiger’s body, their second day on the mountain. It had taken some argument, but Ire had eventually convinced him that the greatest respect they could pay the fallen warrior was to wear his armour on their journey.  
  
Iriel was trying to press himself against Julan with all his limbs at once, but had too many of them to really succeed. “I guess you’re right about imminent doom not being all that sexy,” Julan muttered, after a few minutes of this, “but you squirming around half naked between my legs certainly is.”  
  
Ire sat bolt upright. “Wait!” he said. “Yes! Right! I’ve changed my mind! Fuck me!”  
  
“Uhh… You’re sure that’s really a good–”  
  
“Yes! I’m full of nothing but morbid nonsense, and I need to get it screwed out of me.”  
  
Julan rubbed his eyes and stretched, bracing his back against the curving brass wall. “Iya… no offence, but… when has that ever worked, before?”  
  
“Previous failure is no reason to stop repeating an experiment,” mumbled Iriel, but the energy had already left his voice, and he stopped interfering with Julan’s belt. “I’m sorry,” he sighed, head sinking forwards. “It’s just… lately, every time I touch you, I start thinking… what if this is the last time? What if this is our last chance?”  
  
“Look, how about you stop trying to make sure our last time is the worst one ever, and focus on how we make sure it’s  _not_  the last?” Julan was pulling blankets from his pack. “Like by keeping your strength up, and getting some rest.”  
  
Iriel offered no resistance, cushioning the metal beneath him as best he could, and curling foetal. Settling himself alongside, Julan wrapped an arm around Ire’s shoulders and pressed his mouth to his ear. “Harileth, ka harilethar zunni, Iyabibi.”  
  
“Hmm? I love and… will love… something else?” Ire shifted in Julan’s embrace to pout at him. “It’s not fair to say sweet things, if I can’t understand!”  
  
“How d'you know they’re sweet? I could be insulting you.”  
  
“You didn’t mention guar, so…”  
  
“It’s just a way to say goodnight,” Julan said. “To children, usually,” he added, a touch sheepishly. “I used to hear it in the camp. It means: I love you, and I’ll love you tomorrow.”  
  
Ire’s mouth twitched. “Tomorrow…”  
  
“As many as we get. And I intend to fight for them. I know… it’s not about us. That succeeding is more important than whether we survive it. But… this isn’t a suicide mission. I’m going to fight with everything I’ve got. You have to, as well. Don’t burn out on me yet, Iya. Think about what you want, afterwards. Hold onto it.”  
  
Ire managed a laugh, this time. “There you go again with the storybook hero talk, it’s adorable.” Dodging Julan’s nose, he nuzzled close. “Harileth,” he whispered, between kisses. “Harilem. Either. Both. All the forms. All possible tenses. Yesterday and tomorrow, and now… and now… and now…”


	198. sunder

Iriel ran his hand along the bookshelf, fingers gathering dust as they jumped from spine to spine, specks of atrophied leather flaking away. Mzuleft had been far more well preserved than this ruin. But then, Mzuleft had been sealed. Not used as a workshop-slash-drinks-cabinet by an ash vampire for centuries. An ash vampire currently lying out in the hall, its bulbous yet withered ash yam of a head caved in.

Once, the discovery of so many Dwemer texts would have sent Ire into paroxysms of academic glee. Now, his first reaction was exhaustion at the mere thought of coercing his soap-bubble attention-span through so much information. Next came muted sorrow that he’d never succeed, quickly subverted by guilty relief he didn’t have to try. At least it took the pressure off. At random, he pulled out an ancient volume, and opened it across the rusted iron desk. Dwemeris script, angular and precise.  
  
“Can you read it?” Julan asked. His voice echoed strangely among the brass pipes and valves, backed by the dim vibrato of restless machinery, deeper in the ruin.  
  
Suppressing a smile at Julan’s optimism, Ire shook his head. “Not any more. But it’s in the same handwriting as the others, and the blueprints on the wall. Diagrams and formulas… these are the notes of someone recording their experiments. Over a very long time, judging by the number of volumes.”  
  
“Kagrenac?”  
  
“I think so.”  
  
“What was he doing?”  
  
“I have no idea. I’d have to take them to Baladas.”  
  
“You used to have lots of ideas.” Julan scrutinised him, as if he thought furrowing his brows hard enough might let him see into Iriel’s brain. “You’ve really forgotten everything you learned about the Dwemer? You’re sure it’s not just… locked up in your head, somewhere, waiting to be found again?”  
  
“What does it matter? I should still take the books to Baladas. I was being selfish, before, trying to hoard my discoveries, when I knew he was the expert. What’s important is that this knowledge is used to make the world a better place.”  
  
Julan’s eyes flickered to the far end of the table, where a brass hammer lay, perfect in its symmetry. Deceptively small. “I’m not sure it’s that kind of knowledge,” he said.  
  
Iriel shrugged. “It’s just a tool. To build or break. Both are sometimes necessary.”  
  
“You sound so… Altmer.” Julan, sitting on an iron keg, folded his arms on the table and narrowed his eyes at the hammer. Holding it, he claimed, made him feel huge and leaden, like a Steam Centurion. For all that it was impossibly heavy for its size, it was very difficult to put down.  
  
“Nothing I said was especially Altmeri,” Iriel tutted, turning another page. “You only think that because you dislike what I said, and you want to assign the reason to something simple and unalterable, such as race, so you can dismiss my point without considering it.”  
  
Julan huffed and rolled his eyes, as Ire continued: “If anything, my words were more akin to something Sotha Sil might say. It was his idea to use the tools to tap the divinity of the Heart, you know.”  
  
“Yeah, well. That’ll be why I don’t like it, then.” Julan slumped lower, suspicion churning uneasily in every movement: arms, shoulders, jaw. “And I still don’t trust Vivec.”  
  
“You don’t have to. You heard the announcement in Ghostgate - we’re free agents, now. The Nerevarine, whoever that may be, is no longer persecuted, but a champion of the Tribunal, authorised to act in their stead.”  
  
“And I don’t get why he needs a champion, when he has an entire Temple army. Besides, even a weakened god has to be stronger than the two of us. He’s up to something, but what? If he really doesn’t expect us to return the tools to him… and he  _gave_ us Wraithguard… then what?” Julan’s nails drummed a hollow rhythm against the table. “Those dreams at Ghostgate… you don’t think he wants us to use the tools on the Heart ourselves, do you?”  
  
“And become gods?” Ire snorted, sending a wave of dust from the brittle parchment. “No. He was warning us, teaching us. Showing us how to fail, so that we might not.”  
  
He smoothed the ancient pages with a careful hand. “Baladas was wrong about something,” he said. “Knowledge is worth nothing, in itself. Whatever we learn must be shared, used to further our collective understanding. To stop others making the same mistakes as the Tribunal, Dagoth Ur, and the Dwemer.”  
  
“You said you didn’t remember what the Dwemer did.”  
  
“What?” Ire looked up, blinking. “I don’t.”  
  
“Then how do you know they made a mistake?”  
  
“I…” Iriel paused, fingers jerking, sending long shadows snaking across the table from the candle at his elbow. “I really don’t remember what I wrote in my report, but… I do remember other things. Dreams, echoes. Dream-echoes. Something went horribly wrong, for the Dwemer. For the Tribunal… it went horribly right.”  
  
“And for Dagoth Ur?”  
  
A shudder. “Just… horribly.”  
  
“What else do you remember?”  
  
“How not to fail.” His voice was dry and papery as the book before him. “How to sever the dead divinity of Lorkhan from this world, and stop people feeding off his corpse, like scavengers. I wasn’t sure, until we found the other tools, but now… I can feel it.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“It’s an enchantment. Several of them, layered like notes in a chord around the Heart by Kagrenac, so he could channel and direct its power. Tonal enchantments… half magic, half music. Now that I know what I’m listening for, I can sense it, even from here.”  
  
“And you’re going to… what? Figure out how to trigger it, like that teleport glyph you opened?”  
  
“No. I’m going to do something far blunter than that. The magical brute-force overload to end all overloads. Unsophisticated, Helende would say. Breaking a lock, not picking it. In musical terms… oh gods, I don’t know. Hurling your lyre through the Orchidite Window of the Alinor High Temple in the middle of the Mourning Solitaire?” He grimaced. “I don’t know what will happen after that, but it’s going to be messy.”  
  
“I’ll bet. You’re sure this is what Vivec wants?”  
  
“I think so. What the Tribunal are doing with the Heart of Lorkhan… it may look prettier than what Dagoth Ur is doing, from the outside, but on the inside, it’s not so different, and it needs to end. It’s not a healthy relationship.”  
  
“Then why not end it themselves? They chose this, and they kept on choosing it. Why didn’t they destroy the Heart long ago, if they think it’s such a great idea?”  
  
Ire looked up, candle-flames flickering in his steady eyes. “Because they’re  _addicts_ , love. Vivec… he’s self-aware enough to realise it, but… he’s in withdrawal. He knows if he was near the Heart himself, he wouldn’t be able to resist. He’s a god, but his divinity is the source of his sickness, it’s exactly the wrong sort of strength. That’s why he needs a champion, that’s why he’s asking for help. From a neutral party, because it can’t be anyone too close to him, whose faith might be tarnished by the knowledge. Soon, that faith will be all he has left.”  
  
“And the others, Almalexia and Sotha Sil? Did they agree to this? Has Vivec even told them?!”  
  
Iriel gave an awkward shrug, bent over the book again. “Severance is always painful. That doesn’t stop it from being necessary, sometimes. Slaves not being equipped to handle freedom isn’t an argument against them having it, only for care in the cutting, support on the landing. And I have no idea what support an ex-god would need. It’ll hurt. Worse than hurt, perhaps.”  
  
“You mean… if we destroy the heart, it could kill them? And you still think this is what Vivec wants?”  
  
Ire turned pages for a while, too fast for reading. “I don’t have the brain to appreciate them the way I used to,” he said, “but from what I recall, Vivec’s later writings have this ongoing preoccupation with… annihilation. With destroying and replacing things that have served their purpose, or were mistakes from the beginning. He seems… frustrated. Worried that the needs of the people will change, and he won’t be able to meet them. That the Dunmer must learn to break free of the things that are holding them back. You begin to suspect he means himself. That, read a certain way, the Sermons are almost… his will. Or the longest suicide note ever, a writ of self-execution. There’s certainly something terribly Mephalan about it all.”  
  
“Maybe he can’t live with himself any more. Maybe the guilt of murdering Nerevar weighs too heavily on him.”  
  
Iriel gave him a searching look. “Are you really so certain they killed him?”  
  
“What? You don’t buy into that Temple propaganda, do you?!”  
  
“All the sources, even the most anti-Tribunal ones based on Alandro Sul’s words to the Ashlanders, record that Nerevar was mortally wounded when he was carried from Red Mountain. Sul was injured too, blinded, some say, and likely not even present when Nerevar consulted his queen and advisers. Of course he was devastated to hear that his shield-brother was dead, afterwards. Of course he was riddled with survivor’s guilt, and wanted someone to blame, other than himself, for failing to protect his lord. But the Tribunal didn’t need to kill Nerevar, he was already dying.”  
  
“Tilde says there’s a coded bit in Vivec’s poetry, where he admits he did it.”  
  
“Mm. She also says it’s barely even a code, and a child could crack it. More importantly… an explicit confession, from someone like Vivec? You’d take that at face value?”  
  
“Why confess, if he didn’t do it?”  
  
“Why confess at all?” Ire’s finger idled against a page, tapping and spiralling. “Have you never… felt unable to contradict terrible lies someone told about you? Even…  _wanted_  people to hear them, because then you’d finally know what they really thought of you, find out what they were willing to believe? See who, if anyone, would defend your innocence?”  
  
“No. People always made their opinions about me pretty clear. What’re you–?”  
  
“And… it’s irrational, but… if you feel guilty about something… if there was someone who loved you, but you failed to live up to that love, whether through betrayal of an oath, or just… constantly falling below their hopes and expectations until you’d ruined everything… if it’s too late for you to fix that mistake, perhaps there’s a certain appeal, in being blamed for something worse. A warped form of atonement.”  
  
“I think you’re taking this too personally.”  
  
“Perhaps. I just know that guilt is strange. Self-hatred is strange. I doubt that divinity makes it less so.”  
  
A shrug, as he closed the book. “And then, of course, Vehk is a poet. Perhaps he thought making himself Nerevar’s killer would be the perfect metaphor. But surely the real place he murdered Nerevar is in his writings, where he condemns him to history as a blundering dullard, stumbling after his teacher, misunderstanding his wisdom.”  
  
“Uh huh. And how about selling us out to the Empire, and torturing dissidents? Was all that for poetic effect, too?”  
  
“I’m not defending everything he did. But I do find it hard to blame Vivec for making himself divine. For finding a way to sever himself forever from the person he used to be.”  
  
“Pity he became a worse one, doing it.”  
  
“Mhm.” Ire shifted position, expression, nothing holding still long enough to give a firm guide to his opinion. “He sought godhood as a way to endure himself, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t a perfect god like the Aedra, how could he be? He was still mortal when he designed himself. His divinity was always a mixture of contradictions and flaws, however gloriously gilded, but once formed, he was static. He lost the ability to change, to grow. And stasis, as he tells us again and again in the Lessons, is nothing. It’s addiction to the thing that holds you above the spikes, out of the pit, but it’s an illusion, because you’re already in the trap. Stuck there, unless you’re willing to chew off a limb… or a heart. Or ask someone to cut you free. Either way, you might not survive the journey to freedom. You still might choose to risk it.”  
  
Moving to the bookcase, Iriel replaced the journal carefully on the shelf. “The thing about survivors, Caius once told me, is that it’s often best not to ask what they did, in order to survive. Vivec cut his mortality away. Now he needs to cut his divinity, away, too.”  
  
He turned back to Julan, fingers interwoven. “Perhaps you’re right, and I’m taking it too personally, but… I want to view it positively. A painful rebirth from his own simulacrum.” He gave a wan smile, shrugged. “Or just letting go of a coping mechanism he doesn’t need any more.”  
  
“Sorry.” Julan rubbed at his forehead with both hands, eyes closed. “I don’t mean to argue with you, I’m just tired. There’s little enough chance to sleep here, and when I do…”  
  
“The dreams. I know.” Iriel crossed the floor to where Julan was sitting, and began stroking his temples, gently massaging his brow. “I don’t know why he even bothers. He’s hardly likely to convert us now, is he?”  
  
“Maybe he’s scared.” Julan dragged a weary smile from somewhere, settling his arm around Ire’s hips. Silence for a while, then: “Want to know a secret? I used to wonder if Dagoth Ur was right, if maybe the Nerevarine was supposed to join him, not defeat him. Return the tools that were entrusted to him by Nerevar, and then stolen from him by the Tribunal. I mean, that makes sense, right? In a Bal Molagmer sort of way.” His tone was light, but an increased tension beneath Ire’s fingers betrayed the shame of the admission.  
  
“That’s not why I thought it, though,” he added, his voice dulling. “I was angry, bitter. I thought any change for Morrowind would be better than living under the Empire’s thumb, beneath the mockery of false gods. Don’t get me wrong, I still hate the whole pack of them, but my hatred’s not that blind. I can see that the change the Sharmat wants is pure destruction. It’s burning without having anything to plant in its ashes, breaking things apart without knowing how to build. He can’t help my people, only use them. I’m no poet, but if I was trying to make it a metaphor, then the return of Nerevar has to mean something else.”  
  
“What is required by the ever-changing mortal agenda, the will of critical harvest?” Ire was biting the inside of his cheek. “You keep saying Morrowind needs this story of the Nerevarine facing down evil against impossible odds,” he said, “but what happens if we fail? What kind of story is that? I thought you hated tragedies.”  
  
Julan ground his jaw for a while. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s one where the heroes prove themselves through the things they attempt, not the things they succeed at. And… that’s comforting, right? Because you can’t always succeed, but you can always try. Aagh! Not so hard on my neck!”  
  
Ire snatched back his hands. “Sorry!” he gasped, “I forgot. How is it doing, by the way?”  
  
“Still hurts if I turn it too far dusk, but it’s mostly just stiffness. It was good what you were doing before, if you want to carry on.” He grinned up at Ire. “You’re getting a preview of what I’ll be like as a fussy old man with bad joints, I’m afraid.”  
  
His grin faded. “What’d I say? Listen, I’m not dying up here, and neither are you. I told you, I’m not letting that happen, so you don’t have to… worry… about…” He trailed off, eyes widening.  
  
And Iriel suddenly regretted the many hours Julan had spent studying his face like an astrologer divining the future in the heavens, learning to read his mayfly moods in each frozen glance and twitching frown. Because now, Ire had nowhere to hide the fact it wasn’t just anxious fear in his eyes. It was concealment and guilt, and Julan knew it was, and Ire knew that he knew, and Julan knew that Ire knew that–  
  
Julan’s voice struck the silence like a hammer: “What?”  
  
Iriel swallowed. “Sweetheart, there’s… something we need to discuss.”


	199. keening

“I knew it.” Julan’s hands had tightened into fists beneath the table. “I knew you’d do something like this. I knew it, I just– hoped–”  
  
Iriel sat opposite, still as stone. “I’m sorry,” he said, yet again.  
  
Between them on the table lay a sigh-thin crystal blade, bright as tears. Fixed in a hilt like a banded shackle. Even motionless, it seemed to be travelling at a great speed, as if without the hilt to hold it still, the blade might vanish, slicing through reality and away. When Ire held it, he became faster, sharper. Everything around him began to look like a short cut, ready to be opened.

He hadn’t intended to have this conversation now, had meant to wait until everything was over. Perhaps, by then, he’d know what to say. Or he’d be dead, which would, in many ways, be easier. Now he’d let it spill clumsily over his lips anyway, and perhaps some of the terror had gone with it, because he felt eerily calm.  
  
“How long?” Julan asked. “How long’ve you been planning this, without telling me?”  
  
“I wasn’t planning anything,” Iriel said softly. “I’ve known it was in my head for some time, but… I thought it would go away. I assumed… that it was only my treacherous brain, trying to make me sabotage everything, as usual. I hoped… that was all it was.”  
  
“But,” said Julan, voice flat, “it’s not.”  
  
Iriel pressed his lips together, and shook his head, slow and deliberate.  
  
“Were you even gonna tell me?” That old, paranoid hitch in his breath. “Or was I just gonna wake up, one morning, and find you gone?”  
  
“No!” The first word was a reflex, torn from his throat. The rest took longer to organise.  
  
“I told you,” he said at last, brow knotted with the effort of clarifying his meaning, each word precisely enunciated and spaced. “I want you to come with me. That’s why I’m asking you to come with me, because you need to know. How much I want it. It’s just that… I already know your answer, and I understand why.”  
  
Ire held his lover’s gaze. He felt the grief, a hard lump in his throat, but he kept it there, and didn’t let it rise. Julan looked back at him, jaw equally tensed.  
  
“I thought about not asking,” Ire continued, slowly paying out his confession like a chain. “Or saying that I didn’t want you to come. Staying is so obviously the best thing for you, that I thought I’d spare you the guilt of turning me down. But… surely you know I could never leave without a word, leave you wondering why? You deserve to know how desperately I want you to come with me. You need to know that, when you make the choice we both know you’ll make.”  
  
Julan seemed about to get up and range around the room, but at the last moment, he changed his mind. He focused the energy into his stare, instead. “Why are you so sure you know what I’ll choose?”  
  
Ire folded his hands carefully in his lap. “Because you need to be needed,” he said. “And they need you more than I do.”  
  
Incomprehension spasmed in Julan’s face. “The Ahemmusa… they don’t really need me, not… not  _me!_  They need hunters, warriors. Maybe a few of them want me as a symbol, a reminder of my father. Minabibi even thinks Sinnammu’s planning to put me forward for khan someday, but not because I’d be good at it! Because she thinks she could control me! It’s all just…  _politics_. Not one of them cares about me the way you do.”  
  
“Only because they don’t know you the way I do. They’ll love you, if you let them. Don’t you dare go thinking I’m the only one who ever will.”   
  
“You underestimate the Ahemmusa if you think one person is the difference between survival and destruction. They’re stronger than that.”  
  
“Still stronger with you, than without. Anyway, it isn’t just that, and you know it. They’re your people, they always have been. You need them, and they need you.”  
  
“And you don’t.” The last syllable fell dead from his tongue: not a question.  
  
Ire raised his chin, held the lump where it was. “No. I love you and want you beyond anyone, and I’ll miss you… past all metaphor, because nothing comes close, but… I’ll survive. I’ll be safe, like I promised.”  
  
“Cutting away all the things you don’t need any more…”  
  
Ire made a noise of frustration, calm aura dissolving. “Sweetheart, how many times must I say that I want you to come with me? Do you think that if people don’t need you, there’s no reason they’d keep you around? It’s the opposite! It’s because I don’t need you to survive any more that I can see clearly just how much I love and want you! How full my life can be, when I move past mere survival.”  
  
He exhaled sharply, ran his hands through his lengthening hair. “I used to hate needing people. I thought independence was the same as freedom. I know, now, that isn’t true. But I refuse to invent a dependency that isn’t there, simply to manipulate you into a decision you’d regret later.” His voice pitched upwards, tight-strung. “I’m trying to make this easier on you. I’m sorry, I know how much you hate that.”  
  
Julan’s head slumped between his elbows, chin on the desk. He made a choking noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh.  
  
“I wish I could be selfish, and hide here with you forever,” Ire continued. “But you see… it’s not just about me. There are things I need to do. Which is your fault. Yours, and everyone else who made me believe I could do them, and who gave me the tools to try.”  
  
“And you can’t do it in Vvardenfell, whatever it is, you have to do it in Summerset?”  
  
“Yes, because my country… my whole people… are a system. And so long as I remain here, I’m still within that system, and I’m doing what it expects of me. It’s no true opposition at all.”  
  
“That makes no sense.”  
  
“Summerset has neat categories, for rebels, and people who don’t fit. You’re made an Ouster, or an exile, and either way, you become invisible. As long as I stay within that narrative, they’re getting what they want from me, and I can’t bear that.”  
  
“You’re going back out of spite?!”  
  
“Gods, you make it sound so petty. I want to change things. Not everything, perhaps, but something. Make things better, if only for a few. Not as a warrior, not even one like my ma, but… quietly. Softly. Like Muriel or Helende, Jobasha or Uupse Fyr. Or even Kaye, but… if you want to heal suffering, it helps to understand it, and there are certain types of suffering I know a lot about. Perhaps I can use that knowledge. Make it worth something, finally.”  
  
Settling his hands, he laced them on the table before him. “There must be other people, falling through the cracks, and someone ought to be there to catch them. Or to fish them out of wherever they land.”  
  
“Fishing, huh?” Fighting its way through the other emotions on Julan’s face was the edge of a smile.  
  
“Well… he is good with nets. And… someone has to go and rescue him, don’t they? Assuming he even made it to Morrowind, who knows what might happen to him, all alone? He’s a bit of a delicate flower, my pa, to be honest. Not that we’ll go back to Lillandril, at least not yet. I have no interest in seeing my ma, though if she does hunts us down, I think I could handle her, now. But… there are plenty of places we might try. After all, I promised Tilde I’d find her somewhere safe.”  
  
“Sottilde’s going with you?!”  
  
“She wants a new start, somewhere as far away from the Camonna Tong as possible. Remember last time we saw her, on that awful silt strider that swayed so much she kept threatening to name the baby after it, if she had to give birth inside a bug’s arse?”  
  
“…Still dunno about Thorax for a boy, but Antenna’s kind of pretty…”  
  
“After we got to Vivec, I told her to go and wait for my pa, in Ebonheart. I didn’t have a plan, then, only that they should take care of each other, if I didn’t come back from Red Mountain. Now, I… think I might have an idea. And it involves me going with them.”  
  
He made a dubious face, wrinkling his nose. “I won’t lie to her, it’s going to be difficult. Scandalous, probably, though I hope I won’t have to actually marry her to save her honour. I mean, in Summerset, that would only exchange one scandal for another. Marrying a Nord, the depravity! Far worse than marrying a man - think of the bloodline! Of course, I also have no legal existence there. Which… might even help, actually. I might be able to… work the system a little.”  
  
“You  _do_ have this all planned out, then.”  
  
“Oh gods. Not remotely. I only hope Tilde can handle a sail better than you. I’m sure she can handle my pa, I have no concerns there. Charm him in seconds, probably, no spell required. In fact…” Iriel broke off, chewing his nail, eyes darting around the room.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I do hope he’s put on weight since I last saw him, I just had the most appalling thought.”  
  
“Sounds like you’ve had enough thoughts,” Julan said, jamming a stick into the gears of Ire’s churning computations. “Since you’re so certain you know my choice already.”  
  
Iriel reached for his hand across the table, careful not to touch the crystal blade lying between them. “I know that you spent your whole life trying to be part of something bigger than yourself, and now you can. I know that you’re a young, green thing, growing into any scrape of dirt that will hold your hungry, scrabbling roots. And I would love to let you cling to me like lichen as I run before the wind, but that would be selfish, because you aren’t lichen, my love, and you can’t thrive that way. You need deeper soil to grow into the tree that you are.”  
  
Julan frowned, gripping Ire’s hand with a belligerent strength. “And you need to stop telling  _me_  off about metaphors, then saying stuff like this! More importantly, stop telling me what I need! It’s complicated. You’re not wrong about some of it. But… you’re not the only one who’s learned things about survival. Roots… soil… they’re not always where you think they are. I know what clan really means, now. Why’d you think I wanted to be marked for you, first? But… still… gods. I don’t know. If I left, and something happened…”  
  
“Something will always happen, wherever you are, love. It’s not up to you.”  
  
“I know, but… I’d…”  
  
“Rather be wrong about staying. I know.” Ire was losing control, now, but held onto a smile long enough to say: “Will you at least come and see us off? I’d like you to meet my pa. You could even change your mind at the last minute, and take a flying leap off the docks. That would be very romantic.”  
  
“Or you could change your mind, and come back to me. No matter how long, I’d still want to see you. To know that you’re happy.”  
  
“I will be. You have to be, too. Happy fucking endings, right?” His voice broke against the fifth word, and the last was muffled in Julan’s chest, who had rounded the table to hold him.  
  
He wouldn’t let go, but in time, Julan said, “I haven’t decided, so don’t start thinking different. But… suppose I did stay… you’d take care of Tilde for me, right? And let her take care of you?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“And would you do one other thing for me?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Have the tribe perform the bone-rites for you.”  
  
“The…?”  
  
Julan’s arms were clamped around him, his lips at Ire’s ear. “The ghostline. Bind your soul into our ghostline. You always said you didn’t want to go to Aetherius with a load of Altmer, when you die. So come back and be with me instead.”  
  
Ire was paralysed by surprise. “Julan, I… I don’t believe in that. Even after everything, I still don’t believe that my soul, or whatever energy survives, after my death would be me, in any real sense. Anyway… don’t you need my bones?”  
  
“Well… I still, um…” Releasing Ire, he fumbled in his shirt pocket, and dug something out. Ire stared at the off-white fragment in his palm.  
  
“Oh gods. Is that…?”  
  
“Yeah. D'you want it back?”  
  
“What? No!” Iriel sat back, his lips moving silently as he tried to think. “But surely the rites would never work across such a great distance. Teleportation wouldn’t.”  
  
“It’s not the same. It’s not about working out numbers of arcane whatever. There’s a reason only the Ghostfence could stop it. It’s about faith.”  
  
“You know I’ve never been good at that.”  
  
“Then let me do this, if it doesn’t matter anyway.”  
  
“It does matter.” He laughed shakily. “I mean, what if it worked? You really want a weird vassith Altmer soul in your family ghostline? Where I’ll have to meet your wife and children… oh gods and your  _mother_ … and make polite conversation about… oh, hello, yes, I’m just someone your father used to… to…”  
  
A tear fell, then, and Julan gathered him back into his arms. “Souls don’t work that way, Iya. I don’t know much, but I know it won’t be like that.”  
  
“I know, I’m just…  I… all right. I don’t think it will work, but… yes. If we live, I’ll do it.”  
  
“And if you meet someone new, and you change your mind, and want to go wherever he’s going instead… then… I get it, but… you have to come back to Vvardenfell. To tell me, and to undo the rites, and you have to bring him with you, so I can meet him and see if he’s worthy of you.” Ire felt him shrug. “Or let him take bone-rites, too. I’m not as jealous as I used to be.”


	200. heart

_How to climb a mountain. Step by step, inch by inch, hand in hand. Falling in crevasses and getting back out again, because this is not the hole you’re going to die in today. Magic when you can spare it, rope when you can’t, and always hands and arms and legs and backs and hearts, yours and others. I know, it hurts. Keep going anyway._  
  
_It really is a terrible metaphor. There’s nothing special about being higher up._

_Are we the Bal Molagmer, then? Is that why we climb? Nameless, faceless heroes, braving the mountain of fire, and stealing burning stones? I never did find out what those were for. Perhaps we can use them to rebuild our burned bridges._  
  
_Burning bridges, building paths, climbing mountains, escaping pits. So many clichés. But they’re not supposed to accurately represent the chaos, they’re maps out of it. Prophecies are just stories with happy endings, and you can write your own as you go. Leave them behind, so that others might find their way. They’ll never know if it was true, and it won’t matter._  
  
_We go different, and in thunder. Each to the beat of our own doom-drum._  
  
_I’m going to break his heart. That’s not a metaphor._  
  
_According to Vivec, there is no bone that cannot be broken, except for the heart bone. Proving that for all his poetry, he was not immune to sentimental clichés. Of course, with Vivec, the danger is always that it might not be a metaphor. God has no need of theory and he is armoured head to toe in terror._  
  
_I’m scared, too._  
  
_But unlike Vehk, I am shielded by my mortality, and I cannot be trapped in the cracked crystal of my (im)perfections forever._  
  
_Shift ye in your skin, I say to the Trinimac-eaters. Pitch your voices into the colour of bruise._  
  
_This whole island, ruined and reborn. Surviving the fire, again and again. All of us, finding new ways to survive… and then surviving those. Surviving the forms we had to take, to stay alive in the places we found ourselves, learning to breathe ashes, drink poison, eat shit._  
  
_We can do this, because whatever survives, grows._  
  
_And whatever happens next, something will survive of me, because I exist now. I have already existed, and this cannot be undone, short of deeper magic than I’ll ever know._  
  
_Survive, if not intact, then by parts. My blood will join the ash and feed the mushrooms. My bones… my bones will be quiet, unthreatening. My soul is energy, in which all lost possibilities are regained._  
  
_For now… we are Nerevarine. Failed, false, fallen Incarnates. You are Nerevar, my love, as I am Nerevar, as all of us breathing air and ash and magic are Nerevar, because he died and we live, and we are all the Changed Ones. All Trinimac, all Malacath, bruise-tinted, shit-stained heroes. Stealing whatever godhood we can. Wearing our curses as badges of honour, because fuck you, Azura, that’s why._  
  
_We have no ancestors guiding us. We banished them all, again and again, though they wait beyond the door, always returning. Sometimes because they love us, but love alone is not enough._  
  
_But then, love is never alone. It is born of, and parent to, so many ugly and beautiful things. Things to grow, to nurture, and be nurtured by. Things to build. A city of swords, to cut ourselves into better shapes. A city of gods and monsters, to be razed and restored, brick by brick. A home, secret and safe as any pocket dimension, which is to say, never as safe as you hope, but… sometimes doors need opening from the outside._  
  
_I move, and I pulse at the heart of a web of threads… no, a net… no… a bloodline. A lacing network of living support, easily grazed at the edges, but more healing and resilient then I could ever imagine. It’s not a thing I can leave behind, because it isn’t there, isn’t outside. I’ll carry it with me. I grew it myself._  
  
_I’m taking it all. Taking all my blood and ash, all my ghosts and bones. To find what lies beyond my burning, in the pathless, unstoned places between is and is-not-yet. What was and what could be._  
  
_To plant something new… no… to help something different grow. Not an ocean, wild and unpredictable, sinking all who incur its disapproval. Not a garden, clipped into a false, symmetrical notion of beauty, weeds pulled up by the roots. Something in between, blurring the boundary, like a swamp. If my mother is earth and my father is water, then I am neither and both, a new experiment, my own substance and solution._  
  
_Soft and yielding… but sometimes, when people think swampland is solid, they drown themselves, trying to step on it. The stone that recalls it is really water… what if it knew how to be both? It’s no deception. Unless it is. Say no elegies._  
  
_Welcoming the living, the dead and the in-between, all who need to rest somewhere with no need to choose between sinking and swimming. A place to be vague, for a while, indistinct. Cocooned, liquid and lingering in the grey maybe of creation, to see what solidifies. Of healing and metamorphosis. Of absorbing toxins, and nourishing sprouts._  
  
_Tangled and illegible. Hard to translate, because its definitions keep shifting. A ward to its enemies, but part of its charm, to its devotees. Who know that love demands no dissection, no labels._  
  
_I still hope you might choose to be there. I think you’d understand, too. I don’t think ashland is so different from swampland. The Velothi say that on certain days, all the hidden seeds of a certain plant will all bloom at once, and flash the whole land one colour in a brief, day-long frenzy of purple or gold. I’d love to see it._  
  
_But I already know the Ashlands will teem with flowers, if you’re there._  
  
_I have to go back, because I’ve changed and it hasn’t. I can see the invisible, now. I can see in the dark. I can see through walls, see the pale-fringed lichen on the other side. I can see gently, obliquely. Out of the corner of my eye, for some vanish under the weight of too much visibility. I can see, and be seen, according to my will. I can slip into the molten margins, where touching another soul is possible, and extend a hand._  
  
_My other will always be yours._  
  
_I look at you across the fire. And you aren’t my true-love, that isn’t a thing. But I love you, and we dragged each other through the hardest year of our lives. And whoever I love next, and whoever I am loved by… it was you that taught me how._  
  
_So until the next change comes… until the ash takes and remakes us, until we are eaten again…look back at me, through the air and ash. See me here, in this moment, alive and whole, safe from all possible harm._  
  
_If we fall, and they find us, my hand will be in yours, and they’ll know who we were._  
  
He drew a long, clear breath that lifted and filled him like the sail of a boat. His heart rising with the wind, Iriel moved forwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading. <3
> 
> ([optional end credits music: patrick wolf - teignmouth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkL2fU5BK9g))
> 
> if you want, you can [find me on tumblr](https://chameleonspell.tumblr.com)


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